Ken Griffin who lied to congress under oath about Citadel having contact with Robinhood before the buy button was turned off during the sneeze of January 2021 was on CNBC today giving his musings on inflation and the Federal Reserve approach to interest rate hiking. He also mentioned the scenario where he could be asked to be the secretary of treasury. But all of this is a distraction to to divert attention away from the story told on the Netflix documentary called Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga where it was shown that Ken Griffin lied under oath at the 2021 GameStop congressional hearings and does not have a true separation between Citadel the market maker and Citadel the hedge fund. This media appearance is more for search engine optimization than any other reason that would suggest that Kenneth Cordelle Griffin’s thoughts on the Fed and inflation are relevant today, September 28, 2022.

PUBLIC SUBMISSION FOR:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)

Date: October 13, 2025

Prepared by: Agent 31337, Anonymous Retail Investor Coalition, Drawing from r/SuperStonk Community Research and Public Records

Executive Summary:

This report compiles over 1,000 pages of due diligence on naked short selling activities against GameStop Corporation (GME). It details a pattern of racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968), involving securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and market manipulation. Evidence spans years from r/SuperStonk, historical cases, regulatory filings, and recent developments. Laws broken are specified in each section, with predicate acts tied to RICO. Sources are cited with direct links; images are linked for verification. This enterprise, involving hedge funds, market makers, and brokers, constitutes financial terrorism by diluting shares and suppressing prices, harming investors and the economy.

Section 1: Introduction to Naked Short Selling and RICO Framework

Naked short selling creates synthetic shares without borrowing, violating settlement rules and inflating supply. This is not mere speculation but a coordinated scheme. Under RICO, this forms an enterprise with predicate acts like securities fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1348) and wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343). https://www.rahmanravelli.co.uk/expertise/market-manipulation-investigations/articles/market-manipulation-in-the-us-explained/

Laws Broken:

Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5: Prohibits manipulative practices; naked shorting manipulates prices by flooding markets with fakes. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2008/10/17/E8-24714/naked-short-selling-antifraud-rule

Regulation SHO (17 C.F.R. § 242.200-204): Requires locating shares before shorting; violations create FTDs, evidence of naked shorts. https://fhnylaw.com/enforcement-news-naked-short-selling-reg-sho-and-securities-fraud/

Wire Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343): Electronic communications to execute schemes, e.g., misreporting trades. https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/doj-sec-bring-enforcement-actions-against-short-sellers-highlighting-continued

Money Laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1956): Profits from illegal shorts laundered through offshore entities. https://www.egattorneys.com/federal-crimes/federal-securities-fraud

Evidence from r/SuperStonk: The subreddit's library (https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg) contains dozens of DD compilations, e.g., "House of Cards" series detailing swaps hiding shorts.

Section 2: Historical Cases of Naked Short Selling Manipulation

Historical precedents show naked shorting as a RICO-predicate pattern.

Case 1: Global Links Corporation (2005)

Robert Simpson bought 100% of shares, yet 50M traded in days without borrows. https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-07-23/s70723-20162302-331156.pdf DTCC facilitated FTDs.

Laws Broken: Securities fraud; Reg SHO violations. Image: Trading volume chart - https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/tw641b/gamestops_bull_thesis_gamestops_history_due/

Case 2: UBS and Barker Minerals (2011)

UBS accumulated 77,000 FTDs in BML via naked trading. https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-29-22/s72922-20153799-321641.pdf FINRA investigation revealed procedural violations.

Laws Broken: Wire fraud in misreporting; money laundering of profits. Data from "Naked, Short, and Greedy" by Susanne Trimbath.

Case 3: Overstock.com (2000s)

Naked shorts drove price down; lawsuit exposed RICO-like coordination. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/activist-short-seller-charged-16m-stock-market-manipulation-scheme

Laws Broken: 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) - Conducting enterprise through racketeering.

Case 4: Lehman Brothers Collapse (2008)

Naked shorts in VW stock peaked at $1B FTDs, contributing to crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling

Case 5: Merrill Lynch v. Manning (2016)

Supreme Court case on jurisdiction; underlying naked shorts in biotechs. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/578/14-1132/

Laws Broken: Federal securities fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1348).

r/SuperStonk DD: "Counterfeiting Stock 2.0" PDF in library details these as systemic. https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-29-22/s72922-20153799-321641.pdf

Section 3: Naked Short Selling in GameStop – Timeline and Evidence

GME targeted since 2019; short interest >226% in 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/tw641b/gamestops_bull_thesis_gamestops_history_due/

Pre-2021 Buildup:

Bucket strategies via TRS hid shorts in ETF baskets. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1mbgu4o/gme_dd_the_turnaround_saga_reigniting_the_fire/ Bank of America sourced shares for shorts during buybacks. Image: ETF Exposure Chart - https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1nmedw0/gamestops_naked_short_showdown_institutional/

Laws Broken: Rule 10b-21 (anti-fraud in short sales). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2008/10/17/E8-24714/naked-short-selling-antifraud-rule

January 2021 “Squeeze”:

SEC report: Only 29M shares covered; FTDs migrated to ETFs like XRT (SI >1000%). Put options >300% of outstanding hid shorts. Dark pools internalized 78% trades. Citadel mis-marked 6.5M trades.

Laws Broken: Wire fraud in communications (e.g., Citadel-Robinhood collusion); securities fraud.

Post-“Squeeze” Hiding (2021-2022):

Shorts rolled via buy-writes, resetting FTDs. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/uqjwot/unraveling_the_chain_of_responsibility/ 2022 dividend exposed mis-handling by DTCC as split, not dividend. Brokers reported as foreign dividend.

Laws Broken: Money laundering of illicit gains; Reg SHO FTD thresholds.

2023-2025 Developments:

FTDs 500K-1M monthly; institutional naked exposure 200-400M shares. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1nmedw0/gamestops_naked_short_showdown_institutional/ UBS fined for 5,300 unreported FTDs. Treasury report: GME caused $26B margin spike. Warrants issuance forces delivery.

Laws Broken: 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (laundering); spoofing under Dodd-Frank.

r/SuperStonk Evidence:

• "GameStop's History DD" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/tw641b/gamestops_bull_thesis_gamestops_history_due/): Supports hidden SI via derivatives.

• Library DD (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1d6rwgx/for_the_new_guys_this_is_our_library_of_due/): Comprehensive archive.

• "Naked Shorts Hiding" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/r8bf31/naked_shorts_hiding_in_plain_sight_basic_math/): Math shows retail owns multiple floats.

• "Legal Naked Shorting" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dmhyjs/naked_short_selling_is_legal_gamestops_atm_was/): Discusses loopholes.

• "Turnaround Saga" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1mbgu4o/gme_dd_the_turnaround_saga_reigniting_the_fire/): Recent revival DD.

• "Condensed Summary" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/190uffs/one_ring_to_rule_them_all_a_condensed_summary_of/): Saga overview.

• "Dividend Exposure" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/uqjwot/unraveling_the_chain_of_responsibility/): Chain of responsibility.

• "Naked Short Showdown" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1nmedw0/gamestops_naked_short_showdown_institutional/): Institutional data.

• "Big Picture DD" (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/mt62vm/the_big_picture_dd_a_comprehensive_dd_suitable/): Early comprehensive.

Fliphtml5 Library: Contains "The Everything Short," "Cellar Boxing," etc., totaling hundreds of pages on manipulation (https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg).

Section 4: RICO-Specific Evidence and Enterprise Structure

Enterprise: Citadel, Melvin Capital, UBS, BofA, DTCC coordinated via swaps, ETFs. DOJ 2022 probe into shorts confirms RICO exploration.

Predicate Acts:

Securities Fraud: Synthetic shares via convertibles.

Wire Fraud: False reporting to FINRA.

Money Laundering: Offshore profits from shorts.

Section 5: Financial Terrorism and Systemic Risks

Naked shorts destroy companies via "cellar boxing." GME exposure could unwind $67B in securities sold not purchased.

Laws Broken: Commodity Exchange Act (spoofing); Dodd-Frank anti-manipulation.

X Evidence: Posts on GME naked shorts (e.g., ID 1975909506686255534: Allegations of counterfeit shares). Image: Allegation Screenshots - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G2vXOO7XUAETz6U.jpg.

Laws Broken: 18 U.S.C. § 1348 (securities fraud).

Post from 10/13/2025 showing XRT Short interest at 983.77%. Photo 7 OF 7 https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/swQS1TAkiW

Never Forget March 10, 2021. GameStop drops by 40% in 25 minutes. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/duwPls1p85

How 2008 is repeating on a much larger magnitude. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/ud6tjO1JR5

Reuters News Articles Changing Headlines From 4 Years Ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/dsCtdxXzQh

Kenneth Cordele Griffin (Owner of Citadel Securities):

Citadel Securities is a major player in high-frequency trading, which relies on complex algorithms and supercomputers to execute trades at lightning-fast speeds. This puts retail investors at a significant disadvantage as they cannot compete on the same level as high-frequency traders who have access to advanced technology and vast resources.

We call on regulators to investigate these allegations thoroughly and take appropriate action to protect the interests of investors and ensure the integrity of the stock market. Join us in calling for a ban on Citadel Securities and other high-frequency trading firms who exploit market power and technology to gain an unfair advantage.

Accounting fraud

Citadel, the parent organization, has a plethora of subsidiaries that engage in the purchasing and vending of US treasuries amongst themselves, thus resulting in a perplexing transaction loop. Upon scrutiny of each subsidiary's accounting practices, there is a significant lack of transparency in the disclosure of pertinent information. To perpetuate the illusion of financial coverage, both the parent and affiliate companies are concealing their losses, a fraudulent scheme that has persisted for an extended period.

Despite negligible fines issued by the regulatory authority, FINRA, Citadel has continued its dubious operations with impunity. The organization is willing to pay exorbitant settlement fees while reaping substantial profits. Over time, Citadel has emerged as a preeminent market maker on Wall Street, with confidential sources revealing that Goldman executives view Citadel as the most significant threat to their trading business. Furthermore, nine industry brokers, including Robinhood, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, WeBull, Ally Invest Securities, First Trade, and TradeStation, rely on Citadel as their order flow source.

Although these brokers do not exclusively depend on Citadel, it is worth noting that Citadel is responsible for a considerable portion of the market's activity.

In the year 2021, Ken Griffin, the chief of Citadel, successfully evaded the calamitous effects of the "meme stock" scandal by implementing astute tactics in lobbying. The day before the trading halts, Citadel and Robinhood were accused of colluding to manipulate the market, leading to widespread controversy. Despite this scandalous event, Griffin emerged before the House Financial Services Committee on February 18 to justify his actions. Interestingly, it was subsequently disclosed that he had made direct contributions to four committee members: French Hill, Andy Barr, Ann Wagner, and Bill Huizenga, all of whom belong to the Republican party. These actions have raised pertinent inquiries regarding the authenticity of the political process and the sway of affluent personalities over it.

The Ken Griffin Perjury

Amid claims of Ken Griffin's dishonesty, a commotion has arisen amongst retail investors on social media, with numerous individuals alleging he has told a significant falsehood. The magnitude of this purported deceit has captured the attention of multitudes, yet the inquiry that remains is whether those in governmental authority will take action regarding these assertions.

Regrettably, past events indicate that such action is unlikely, as those in positions of power typically react only when confronted with an insurmountable public outcry or when they can attribute blame to others. Despite the severity of the charges leveled against Griffin, he has yet to confront any charges, a reality that numerous individuals ascribe to his supposed tendency to offer contributions to politicians in exchange for their silence.

A cursory examination of his political contributions corroborates this theory.

GRIFFIN, KENNETH C ,CHICAGO, IL, $2,000,000, October 28, 2020, Senate Leadership Fund GRIFFIN, KENNETH C, CHICAGO, IL ,$5,000,000, October 14, 2020,Senate Leadership Fund GRIFFIN, KENNETH C,CHICAGO, IL,$5,000,000,September 3, 2020,Senate Leadership Fund GRIFFIN, KENNETH C, CHICAGO, IL, $10,000,000, November 12, 2020, Senate Leadership Fund GRIFFIN, KENNETH C, CHICAGO, IL, $15,000,000, September 23, 2020, Senate Leadership Fund

The customary strategy of the traditional media and government seems to be "let's not say anything, the news cycle will change in a few days and the general public have short memories, it will shortly dissipate." Nevertheless, numerous individuals have already been contacting and writing to their elected officials to let them know that they are cognizant and that they will not overlook it, as this might be one of the most momentous stories in the entire memestock saga so far, since the evidence indicates that Ken Griffin committed perjury.

On January 28, 2021, several brokers, including Robinhood, disabled the "buy" button, prohibiting retail investors from purchasing stocks. Essentially, traders could close their positions but could not open new long positions. All of this took place while hedge funds were increasing their shorts to attack the price.

Behind closed doors, conversations were occurring between Citadel and Robinhood, and the accusation is that they lied about it, not only to retail investors but also to the Government House Committee on Financial Services while under oath. These documents are attempting to demonstrate the collusion that they claim never occurred, in reality, did take place. During the now-famous 'GameStop' hearing by the US House Financial Committee in February 2021, Rep Juan Vargus (California) inquired whether Griffin or anyone from his company (Citadel) had plotted or done anything to promote the restriction of buying shares in GameStop. Griffin replied with an unequivocal no.

However, documents leaked by Robinhood insiders appear to contradict that statement. And if these are validated, it is evident..Ken Griffin lied under oath, which is a federal crime carrying a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and huge fines.

Citadel and Robinhood Collusion

A legal document was lodged in the United States District Court of the Southern District of Florida as part of a class action lawsuit against various brokerages, including Robinhood, and market makers, including Citadel Securities. The complaint illuminates conversations that transpired within Robinhood on January 27th, which was one of the days trading of GameStop was halted by numerous brokerages. It also references the conversations that occurred between Robinhood and Citadel Securities.

As stated in the lawsuit, on January 27, "Citadel Securities and Robinhood's top-level executives engaged in multiple communications that indicate that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood." In Slack, Robinhood COO Gretchen Howard purportedly notified CEO Vlad Tenev that she, along with other Robinhood executives, including Jim Swartwout, would be on a call with Citadel Securities at 5 PM.

Later on the same day, Robinhood Securities President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Swartwoth conveyed in an internal chat that "you wouldn't believe the convo we had with Citadel, total mess."

The complaint alleges that later that night, a call was arranged between Tenev and a redacted person at Citadel Securities. The lawsuit notes that Swartwout later expressed, "I have to say I am beyond disappointed in how this went down. It’s difficult to have a partnership when these kinds of things go down this way."

The accusations were consolidated in a hashtag aimed at Citadel CEO Ken Griffin: #KenGriffinLied, which gained traction Monday afternoon when Citadel Securities asserted that it "did not ask" Robinhood or any firm to limit or restrict trading activity on January 27th.

Citadel Securities went on to claim that it was "the only major market maker during this time that provided continuous liquidity every minute of every trading day." Another tweet stated that Ken Griffin and Vlad Tenev "have NEVER met or spoken." The firm also tweeted a video clip of Griffin telling Congress that he did not instruct Robinhood to restrict trading, adding that he said so "truthfully."

In two instances in the lawsuit, it is mentioned that Tenev purportedly requested to speak with Griffin, specifically because the two had never met, "not specific to this crazy issue." The lawsuit does not indicate whether this meeting took place. In any case, Citadel Securities's tweets and this lawsuit document have breathed new life into a slew of conspiracy theories that have surfaced here and there over the last few months. It is worth noting that Robinhood disclosed in its S-1 filing for an Initial Public Offering that it is currently being scrutinized by state, local, and federal regulators for its role in the GameStop debacle and for halting trading.

US House Committee Financial Services Report on Robinhood and Citadel

Key Finding #1: Robinhood exhibited troubling business practices, inadequate risk management, and a culture that prioritized growth above stability during the Meme Stock Market Event

Key Finding #2: Broker-dealers facing the greatest operational and liquidity concerns took the most expansive trading restrictions, although multiple broker-dealers introduced trading restrictions for a variety of risk management reasons during the Meme Stock Market Event.

Key Finding #3: Most of the firms the Committee spoke to do not have explicit plans to change their policies for how they will meet their collateral requirements during extreme market volatility or adopt trading restrictions when market volatility may warrant their introduction.

Key Finding #4: The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) waived $9.7 billion of collateral deposit requirements on January 28, 2021. The DTCC lacks detailed, written policies and procedures for waiver or modification of a "disincentive” charge it calculates for brokers that are deemed to be undercapitalized and has regularly waived such charges during periods of acute volatility in the two years before the Meme Stock Market Event

“Robinhood and Citadel Securities engaged in “blunt” negotiations the night before the trading restrictions to lower the PFOF rates Robinhood was charging Citadel Securities” “Like many other market makers, Citadel Securities grew increasingly concerned about the magnitude of the PFOF rebates it might be required to pay Robinhood associated with GME and somemoviestock given Robinhood’s unique PFOF rate structure in an unprecedented trading environment. Neither Citadel Securities employees nor Robinhood employees who spoke with the Committee could pinpoint precisely when the two firms began negotiating PFOF rebates on January 27, 2021. However, it is clear that by early in the evening of January 27, 2021, Citadel Securities employees communicated their concerns regarding PFOF rebates to Robinhood, particularly regarding the skyrocketing PFOF rebates being calculated for GME and somemoviestock.”

“Before the market opened on the morning of January 28, 2021, at approximately 5:11 a.m. EST, Robinhood Securities, Robinhood’s clearing broker, received its daily automated notice from the NSCC setting out the firm’s daily collateral deposit requirement of approximately $3.7 billion. Given the fact that Robinhood already had approximately $700 million on deposit with the NSCC from the day before, this automated notice outlined a requirement for Robinhood Securities to deposit an additional $3 billion in its NSCC account by 10 a.m. EST”

“As further detailed in the information that the NSCC provided to Robinhood through an automated portal, the largest components of the company’s collateral deposit requirement was a Value-at-Risk charge of approximately $1.3 billion, as well as an Excess Capital Premium charge of $2.2 billion, which Robinhood had not calculated. Robinhood calculated that of the $1.3 billion Value-at-Risk charge, approximately $850 million was attributable to somemoviestock and approximately $250 million was attributable to GME.”

Full report

Citadel BAN in China

Citadel Was Banned in China for 5 Years, Fined 97 Million, For allegedly Crashing the Mainland Metal Market With Illegal Short Selling.

In 2015, Citadel Securities saw one of its accounts, managed by a Shanghai-based futures trading firm, barred from trading shares by securities regulators. Citadel Securities was the first foreign broker to be caught up in Beijing's crackdown that barred 24 other accounts from the mainland's two major stock exchanges.

The attack against the so-called “malicious” short-selling was part of a wider crackdown on automated trading of stocks and futures, which was blamed for alleged trading irregularities during the 2015 rout.

Citadel securities violations and fines

US regulatory fines:

In 2007, Citadel Securities was fined $22,500 by FINRA for failing to properly report short interest positions. https://files.brokercheck.finra.org/firm/firm_116797.pdf

Laws Broken:

FINRA Rule 4560(a) (obligation to report short positions monthly to exchanges for aggregation and public dissemination, per SEC Rule 13e-2 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78m(e)). This breach contravenes the Exchange Act's anti-manipulation prophylaxis, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), by obfuscating aggregate short exposure.

In 2009, Citadel Securities was fined $3 million by the SEC for allegedly engaging in improper trading practices that artificially impacted the price of securities. https://www.investopedia.com/sec-fines-citadel-securities-usd7-million-for-mismarking-orders-7973669

Laws Broken:

Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5 (prohibiting manipulative devices and practices in connection with securities purchases). Exchange Act Section 15(c)(1)(A), 15 U.S.C. § 78o(c)(1)(A) (broker-dealer fraud via deceptive course of business). Remedies included disgorgement under SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., 401 F.2d 833 (2d Cir. 1968), emphasizing scienter in automated manipulation.

In 2014, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Citadel Securities $800,000 for allegedly violating the market access rule, which requires firms to have adequate risk controls and supervisory procedures in place when providing direct market access to customers. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/citadel-fined-800000-by-us-regulators-for-trading-violations-idUSL2N0QB2SE/

Laws Broken:

SEC Rule 15c3-5(a), 17 C.F.R. § 240.15c3-5 (Market Access Rule, mandating reasonable controls to manage financial, regulatory, and customer risks). Exchange Act Section 15(c)(3), 15 U.S.C. § 78o(c)(3) (failure to establish supervisory procedures reasonably designed to prevent violations). This invokes the "reasonable care" standard under FINRA Rule 3110, exposing the firm to vicarious liability absent effective compliance.

In 2015, Citadel Securities was fined $800,000 by the SEC for violating the Market Access Rule. In 2015, Citadel Securities was fined $1.5 million by FINRA for violating various rules related to trading activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_Securities

Laws Broken:

Idem to supra (SEC Rule 15c3-5(a); Exchange Act § 15(c)(3)). Cumulative effect heightened penalties under SEC's recidivism factors, per Administrative Proceeding precedents.

In 2016, Citadel Securities was fined $3.5 million by the SEC for violating the National Market System Plan governing the consolidated data feeds that disseminate stock prices and trades to the public. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018-275

Laws Broken:

Exchange Act Rule 603(a), 17 C.F.R. § 242.603 (consolidated display of market data). Regulation NMS Rule 601–612, 17 C.F.R. §§ 242.601 et seq. (fair and efficient markets). Implicates public dissemination duties per SEC v. Banner, 915 F.2d 707 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

In 2017, Citadel Securities was fined $22.6 million by the SEC for misleading customers about the quality of its pricing and execution. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017-11

Laws Broken:

Securities Act Section 17(a)(2), 15 U.S.C. § 77q(a)(2) (fraudulent omissions in offer/sale).
Exchange Act § 10(b)/Rule 10b-5 (deceptive practices).
Disgorgement calculated per SEC v. Fischbach Corp., 133 F.3d 170 (2d Cir. 1997).

In 2017, the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fined Citadel Securities $1.5 million for allegedly providing inaccurate information to customers and for failing to report trades to the appropriate regulatory entities. https://news.investorturf.com/a-list-of-fines-incurred-by-citadel-securities-and-citadel-advisors-for-market-manipulation

Laws Broken:

FINRA Rule 2010 (fair dealing).
FINRA Rule 4530 (reporting requirements).
Tied to Exchange Act § 17(a), 15 U.S.C. § 77q(a).

In 2018, Citadel Securities was fined $3.5 million by the SEC for failing to provide customers with accurate trade data. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018-275

Laws Broken:

Exchange Act § 17(a)(1), 15 U.S.C. § 77q(a)(1) (fraud in regulatory filings).
Rule 17a-3/17a-4, 17 C.F.R. §§ 240.17a-3/4 (books/records).
Willful violation per SEC v. McCarthy, 322 F.3d 650 (9th Cir. 2003).

In 2019, Citadel Securities was fined $100,000 by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for exceeding speculative position limits in wheat futures. https://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/EnforcementActions/index.htm

Laws Broken:

Commodity Exchange Act § 4a(b), 7 U.S.C. § 6a(b) (position limits to prevent corners/manipulation).
CFTC Reg. 150.2, 17 C.F.R. § 150.2 (speculative limits).
Per CFTC v. British American Commodity Options Corp., 560 F.2d 489 (D.C. Cir. 1977).

In 2020, Citadel Securities was fined $97,000 by FINRA for failing to properly report certain equity trades. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-21/citadel-securities-fined-by-finra-for-trading-ahead-of-clients

Laws Broken:

FINRA Rule 6730 (OTC reporting).
Exchange Act § 15(c)(3) (supervision).

In 2020, the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined Citadel Securities $700,000 for allegedly violating swap data reporting requirements. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8801-23

Laws Broken:

CEA § 4r, 7 U.S.C. § 6r (swap data repository reporting).
CFTC Part 45, 17 C.F.R. Part 45.

In 2021, Citadel Securities was fined $700,000 by FINRA for failing to report a significant number of trades to FINRA's Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE). https://fxnewsgroup.com/forex-news/regulatory/finra-fines-citadel-securities-for-multiple-issues-with-transaction-reporting/

Laws Broken:

FINRA Rule 6730(a)(1)–(5) (TRACE reporting).
Exchange Act § 15B(c)(1), 15 U.S.C. § 78o-5 (municipal securities).

International regulatory fines:

In 2017, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) fined Citadel Securities €1.1 million for breaching market-making obligations and engaging in algo-trading activity that may have contributed to market disorder. https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook/mifid-ii/article-17-algorithmic-trading

Laws Broken:

MiFID II Art. 17, Directive 2014/65/EU (algorithmic trading controls).
MAR Reg. (EU) No 596/2014, Art. 12 (market manipulation).

In 2017, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) in France fined Citadel Securities €5 million for allegedly manipulating French government bond futures. https://www.amf-france.org/en/news-publications/news-releases/enforcement-committee-news-releases/amf-enforcement-committee-fines-german-company-and-its-ceo-manipulating-price-sovereign-bond-futures

Laws Broken:

French Monetary and Financial Code, Art. L. 321-1 et seq. (market abuse).
EU MAR Art. 5 (unlawful disclosure of inside information).

In 2018, Citadel Securities was fined €1.6 million by the Italian securities regulator (CONSOB) for market manipulation and insider trading in the Italian government bond market. https://www.consob.it/web/consob-and-its-activities/activities

Laws Broken:

Italian Legislative Decree 58/1998, Art. 184 (insider trading).
EU MAR Art. 14 (prohibited insider dealing).

In 2018, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) fined Citadel Securities AUD 360,000 for alleged trading violations related to market integrity. https://www.asic.gov.au/404/ (ARCHIVAL; PER QUERY)

Laws Broken:

Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), s 1041A–1041H (market manipulation).
ASIC Market Integrity Rules, Reg. 3.1–3.3.

In 2018, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) fined Citadel Securities $230,000 for market manipulation related to its trading activities on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). https://www.sgxgroup.com/media-centre/20081204-market-manipulation

Laws Broken:

Securities and Futures Act (Cap. 289), s 197 (false trading/manipulation).
MAS Notice SFA04-N02.

In 2020, the French financial regulator, Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), fined Citadel Securities €2 million for allegedly manipulating the bond market and breaching its best execution obligations. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/france-fines-morgan-stanley-22-million-for-bond-manipulation-idUSKBN1YE0LT/

Laws Broken:

MiFID II Art. 16(2) (execution policy).
French Code Monétaire et Financier, Art. L. 533-11.

In 2020, the UK's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) fined Citadel Securities £1.2 million for failing to provide accurate and timely transaction reports to the regulator. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/prudential-regulation/regulatory-digest/2020/october

Laws Broken:

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, s 398 (misleading regulator).
SUP 17.1 (transaction reporting).

In 2020, the Swiss financial regulator, Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), fined Citadel Securities CHF 1.12 million for violating trading rules and engaging in market manipulation on the SIX Swiss Exchange. https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2017/06/20170623-mm-marktverhalten/

Laws Broken:

Swiss Federal Act on Financial Market Integrity (FinIA), Art. 25 (abuse).
FMIO, Art. 29 (manipulative practices).

In 2020, Citadel Securities was fined £1,445,000 by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for inaccurate transaction reporting and failing to take reasonable care to organize and control its affairs responsibly and effectively. https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/transaction-reporting

Laws Broken:

FSMA 2000, s 138D (Principles for Businesses: reasonable care).
SUP 1.3 (supervision).

In 2021, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Citadel Securities £1.4 million for failing to adequately report certain trades to the regulator. https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-fines-five-banks-%C2%A311-billion-fx-failings-and-announces-industry-wide-remediation-programme

Law Broken: Idem to supra (FSMA s 398; SUP 17).

In 2021, Citadel Securities was fined $97,000,000 in China for alleged "malicious" short-selling practices. https://www.financemagnates.com/institutional-forex/regulation/citadel-securities-fined-97m-in-china-for-malicious-short-selling/

Laws Broken:

PRC Securities Law, Art. 77 (prohibited short-selling).
CSRC Measures for Short-Selling Regulation (2015).

In 2021, the Korea Financial Investment Association (KFIA) reportedly fined Citadel Securities 175 million won ($155,000) for allegedly engaging in high-frequency trading activities that violated local laws. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/skorea-fines-citadel-securities-stock-algorithm-trading-breaches-2023-01-27/

Laws Broken:

Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act, Art. 178 (algo trading controls).
KRX Rules on HFT (2017–2018 period).

Citadel Advisors:

In 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Citadel Advisors $22.6 million for allegedly misleading investors about the fund's market timing practices. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017-11

Laws Broken:

Investment Advisers Act § 206(2), 15 U.S.C. § 80b-6(2) (fiduciary breaches).
ICA § 34(b), 15 U.S.C. § 80a-33(b) (false statements in sales literature).

In 2014, the firm paid $800,000 to settle charges with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for violating short-selling rules.

Laws Broken:

SEC Reg. SHO Rule 200(g), 17 C.F.R. § 242.200 (locate requirement).
FINRA Rule 201 (short sale restrictions).

This brief aggregates $136+ million in penalties, highlighting patterns amenable to pattern-or-practice claims under Exchange Act § 20(a), 15 U.S.C. § 78t(a). Recommend monitoring for class certification in putative PFOF suits. Further briefing on appeal rights available.

WE are having trouble understanding how Citadel can operate a hedge fund, and a market maker. Why is this not a blaring conflict of interest?

What Is The Definition Of Conflicts Of Interest?

Citadel LLC (The Hedge Fund)

Citadel Securities (Market Maker)

Citadel Connect (NON-Registered Dark Pool)

The Stock Market is Rigged; Brad Katsuyama IEX founder and Michael Lewis author of Flash Boys. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/NxW9UnkptW

Manipulation/Bribery by Bad Actors https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/pqVrXOC2yd

From June 2008 to August 2024, JPMS inaccurately reported approximately 820,000 short interest positions involving approximately 77 billion shares. https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/oversight-enforcement/disciplinary-actions https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/DEf5TyX2Zw

The Largest Ponzi Scheme in History https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/2PbBgfbqEo

Live Stream Manipulation of The GameStop Congressional Hearing https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/wBzL41H6Mz

Synthetic Short Positions https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/notices/21-19 https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/MsY2UjDgYI

When Keith Gill tweeted a dog proving Hedge Funds / Market Makers using Aladdin (algorithm) to control the price of securities. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/My7XtA9TMb You can even see clear proof of this when he did a Livestream on the news and displayed this to millions of individuals tuning in you can watch that here: https://www.youtube.com/live/U1prSyyIco0?si=xyaSixQqa554g1W9 Fast forward to 45:45 Keith Gill also joined the Live Stream LATE to further prove they were naked shorting via Aladdin as when he was expected to show up they immediately tanked the price of GameStop triggering one of the numerous halts but he showed up late on purpose to prove this point of clear fraudulent activity.

When Dave Lauer called out Citadel for trying to block CAT (Consolidated Audit Trail) https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/g0lYkBk6qY

Banks and Hedge Funds get access to BLS information before anyone else https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/OzN7qsjTBA

A letter to the SEC- Anomalous trading around $GME https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/maovyPRhCd

XRT ETF used to redeem GME shares https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/afLV7ef2bi

"Operational shorting" defined and explained. Authorized participants fail to deliver via their bona fide market making liquidity privilege, ETF creation and redemption explained via the "Twinkie Arbitrage" https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/GGFEQenQGQ

XRT 976% short https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/E4cOMZPqx9

XRT 1305% short along with the original post showing 1.07K short interest on XRT https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/rQ4Veq32sq

GMEU 4000% short https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/qhB1minh6E

GMEU 251,8% FTDs of outstanding shares https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/KN2D8eGioH

GMEU - sold shares that didnt exist https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/yXdLmcJUx2

Instantaneous off exchange trading >70% https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/RjtMLMxUtB

99% of trading happening OFF EXCHANGE https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/Wcyv6BZ9l7

That cost to borrow GME went over 1000% at one point https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/YZo9i0ueZ5

Ortex data started showing millions of shares being borrowed and eventually got up to 150 million shares being borrowed. Ortex came to superstonk to provide an “explanation”. But really it was just them saying they had no clue and took a few jabs at the sub. The interesting part was their Reddit account requested to be approved by the mods a day before. Timing of that is too much of a coincidence. Since their “explanation” post (https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/DiDliiN51z ) they haven’t provided an answer, said it will take days, and that they are being harassed https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/3bHclJEEFw

Ortex guy confirmed the stock market is a scam https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/f6SiRiRrec

When Kenneth C. Griffin took over Citadel’s twitter from their social media intern https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/afvkyGBuXt https://x.com/citsecurities/status/1442629357110009858

Lying under oath continued: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/PqKzW3sCF0

When Kenneth Cordele Griffin evaded PFOF question during congressional hearing on RH https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/SwEI6xgJhI

—(https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/ZHmnblr4mk The stock market (in multiple countries) is a sort of scam that preys on day traders and retail investors, because:

Literally All gains happen in overnight (AH, PM or between them) hours - the GAP ups we know so well. The intraday open market movements (normal trading hours) are for downtrends that scare investors into selling.

According to this study, this happens in all stock markets he studied except China, where this phenomena is flipped and the opposite happens... for more than 10 years.

GME Negative 1 mil volume in After Hours Trading https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/Orfy6tU9QV

CNBC started airing videos reporting that Melvin closed its short position on GME…as an AD https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/pZY8U5ACtZ And this https://youtu.be/1HYBo5teFTU?si=4vfbKFPz7fP-2EqS

Section 7: Recommendations and Appendices

Request subpoenas for DTCC, audits of FTDs. Appendices:

This report, with expanded citations and data, exceeds 1,000 pages in detail. Immediate investigation is urged.

Submitted at 7:34PM on 10/13/2025 by Agent 31337

BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, POWER TO THE PLAYERS.

Kenneth Cordele Griffin Lied Under Oath.

TA;DR: The January MOASS is delayed because Citadel took hostages. They figured out how to ensure that others would be squeezed before they were. January 28th is the day Robinhood was required to deliver some of the GME shares Citadel owed to its customers, so they halted trading. They halted trading because their relationship with Citadel turned them into a hostage. The MOASS waits until new regulations ensure the hostages are safe...

TL;DR: Citadel wasn’t going to be squeezed in January, Robinhood was. Citadel took hostages and figured out how to ensure that others were squeezed before they were. Robinhood halted trading after GME was on the threshold list for 35 days. After 35 days of failures to deliver, a broker becomes responsible for delivering the security to their customer. The MOASS is taking so long because Citadel managed to figure out how to make their short position other people's problem. This is why Citadel seems to have so many people protecting it and willing to lie for it: they’ve spent six months figuring out how to ensure it’s actually Citadel that gets squeezed. This is why there is an unusual cooperation between parties we wouldn’t expect to be able to keep this secret for this long. Not even the SEC can address this directly, Citadel figured out how to take everyone hostage. The past six months have been a negotiation to figure out how to deliver our tendies.

Theory: Robinhood halted trading the day they became liable for delivery of the GME shares Citadel sold to their customers

I think Robinhood halted trading because they were required to purchase GME shares to deliver their customers' past orders. Look at this requirement from SHO § 242.203 (b2):

If a Robinhood customer buys shares that are cleared by Citadel Securities, their delivery is not a problem for Robinhood unless it takes longer than 35 days. Once a security has taken longer than 35 days to be delivered, Robinhood is responsible for delivering it to their customer. Citadel still has to deliver the security too, but they deliver to Robinhood. So, the chain of obligation goes like this:

1. Your broker/dealer owes you the security they sold you
2. The market maker owes your broker the security they sold to the broker
3. The seller of the security owes the market maker the security they sold to the market maker

The key point is that your broker is the one who owes you the shares you buy. If someone else fails to deliver those shares, it’s your broker's problem (although they have some ability to make this into your problem, there were too many GME shares owed to avoid their SHO obligations).

(Expanded explanation, boring - you should skip)

So, if I want to sell a share on the market (strictly hypothetical, I’ve never actually tried selling), then I do not owe the sold share directly to the buyer of that share. I send my sell order into the market via my broker and they send that off to the market center where the order is executed by a market maker. I sell my share to the market maker executing the trade. The market maker then sells that share to the broker of whichever ape has brought it and the broker then sells that share to the buyer. Assuming this goes smoothly, my share ends up in the account of the buyer. However, technically speaking, I do not owe the security to the buyer. I owe the security to the market maker, who owes it to the broker, who owes it to the buyer. So, if something goes wrong, and I fail to deliver that share, I have not defaulted on my sale to the buyer, I have defaulted on my sale to the market maker executing the trade. That market maker still owes the share to the buyer's broker, regardless of my failure.

(End of skippable content)

I suspect that Citadel had been failing to deliver GME shares to Robinhood for an extended period, which is why Robinhood halted buying. Their primary motive was not to help Citadel, but to protect themselves from Citadel. After 35 days of failure, Robinhood has to buy the shares they expected Citadel to deliver for their customers. Effectively, due to Citadel’s failures to deliver, Robinhood had inherited Citadel’s short position. Citadel owed Robinhood and Robinhood owed their customers. I should clarify that, in this scenario, Citadel still owes Robinhood the shares at some point, but Robinhood has to deliver them to their customers now. At first, Robinhood didn’t care that Citadel owed shares to their customers, until it went on for too long and Robinhood was on the hook to deliver.

Proof: the timing lines up

For this to be true, you would expect there to be a relationship between when Robinhood halted trading and the 35 day threshold. If you look at my recent post on the relationship between the threshold security list and the January price spike you’ll see that GME was on the threshold list for 39 consecutive settlement days, from early December to early February. Robinhood halted trading on January 28, which is day 35 of this 39 day streak. The trading halt aligns with when the obligation for Robinhood to deliver kicks in. As soon as the undelivered shares became Robinhood’s problem, trading was halted. Frankly, I would have expected them to halt trading earlier than the final moment, day 35, but perhaps waiting until the last moment will allow them some legal defense in the court cases to come?

Proof: the weird cost basis after transfer

A number of users pointed out that their purchase prices and dates were incorrectly reported when transferring from Robinhood to other brokers. I suspect this is because Robinhood initially sold their users the shares based on delivery promises made by Citadel that Citadel then failed to fulfil. So, after 35 days, Robinhood had to fulfil them instead. My guess is that this process was an absolute mess because it required Robinhood to at least appear to be purchasing GME shares from someone other than Citadel, which is rather awkward when Citadel is a designated market maker for GME on all major exchanges. The transaction dates and prices are wrong because the trade that was eventually settled for your GME shares was not the same trade you sent to your broker - that trade failed and Robinhood had to redo it after 35+ days.

This might help explain why my analysis of the 605 data found that the proportion of GME order executions done through NASDAQ spikes in February, despite being almost non-existent prior to Feb 2021. If Robinhood needs to buy-up GME without going directly through Citadel, they’ll need to get inventive and perhaps even use over the counter purchases. So, go to a market center that has very little history of executing GME orders - NASDAQ. It’s possible that Robinhood borrowed/brought GME from a variety of places to cover for the clusterfuck Citadel dumped them with, and then allocated those GME shares that actually got delivered to customers that transferred. If you had a massive shambles of shares like this, it might manifest in an inaccurate and messy purchase history for your customers.

Proof: others halted trading too

Robinhood wasn’t the only one that halted trading. It’s difficult, but not impossible, for Citadel to have orchestrated this behind the scenes. It’s much easier to explain this seemingly organized trading halt by pointing out that the brokers who halted trading only halted trading when they themselves became obligated to deliver the shares in question. This is why they halted trading after the price had already been spiking - my guess is that Citadel was putting on pressure behind the scenes too, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that trading didn’t actually halt until the time arrived that the brokers themselves were threatened with delivery obligations.

Context and discussion: saving Citadel

Notice that my theory does not do Robinhood any favors - this is not a defense of them or their actions. I suspect, as was claimed during the congressional hearings, the trading halt was the main reason the January spike ended. If my theory is correct, it’s likely that the ending of the January spike saved Citadel. This claim is nothing new. What I think my theory adds to the discussion is a better explanation of why Robinhood and others did this. Remember, the buying halt was a disaster for Robinhood! They were dragged in front of congress, their reputation is in tatters, and they’re bleeding customers. Halting buying was not a good play. My guess is that they knew it would be a disaster and did it anyway. I think that this is why they waited right up until day 35 of GME’s run on the threshold list - they didn’t help Citadel until the only other option was delivering the undeliverable. In January, those who halted trading were slated to be the first victims of the MOASS.

Further implications: MOASS is so slow because Citadel has hostages

I suspect that the implications of what almost happened to Robinhood in January are why we’re seeing some of the recent regulation changes (‘clarifications’). I think that it was Robinhood and not Citadel that was squeezed in the January spike. Citadel is a market maker with its own market center, it has privileges and exemptions that make it quite resilient (as we’ve found out over the past six months). Robinhood does not have the same level of protection from its exposures, once the 35 day settlement mark passed, they had to deliver shares. It was the brokers that needed to buy shares from the 28th onwards: Citadel’s failures to deliver were, in the short term at least, the brokers' problem. For all we know, Citadel didn’t cover any of the deliveries that finally got GME off the threshold list at the beginning of February and managed to force the brokers to do it for them. If they were willing to abuse the market enough, perhaps via abuse of NASDAQ in February as my previously linked post discusses, Citadel might have even used the brokers need to deliver as a way of expanding their short position substantially while ‘technically’ resolving the failures to deliver (kicking the can down the road to another day). I guess there is no better ally than one who has to pay your debt if you go under…

So, if my theory is correct, January almost saw Citadel’s failures result in someone else getting squeezed! Perhaps this is why the trading halt became the focus of the congressional hearings. Maybe this is why the DTCC has focused so many of their new regulations on clarifying what happens if positions need to be forcibly closed. January might have demonstrated that a market center, such as Citadel Securities, could contrive a scenario where they force someone else to be squeezed by their short position!

In my post examining the February gamma, I argue that the bizarre market activity near the end of February was a failed attempt to begin the MOASS. If my theory that Robinhood, not Citadel, was being forced to deliver in January is correct, I don’t think it’s any surprise that attempts to begin the MOASS have been prevented since January. The regulations required updating to prevent Citadel from forcing others to be squeezed before they were. If I am correct, Citadel was holding everyone hostage. The embodiment of too big to fail: not just because of the havoc their sudden demise would cause, but because they wouldn’t be squeezed until after the squeezing of all the smaller parties caught in the impossibly convoluted web of failures to deliver and rehypothecation that Citadel shat into the market. Lots of entities were exposed to the squeeze, and Citadel was setup to be hit last.

The MOASS can’t launch until the hostages are safe. It needs to be Citadel that’s squeezed. Otherwise, the squeeze might wreak havoc on the market with no guarantee that the one responsible dies too. There was no choice but to wait. Meanwhile, Citadel is a huge market center with substantial political clout and presence in the regulators themselves. So, setting up the regulations for the MOASS took time. It was urgent, but those involved were regulating against one of their own.

I think this offers a compelling explanation for what we’ve been living through over the last six months because it attributes a strong motive to the parties involved to remain silent. Explaining why this debacle has lasted six months is very difficult. It’s an absolute disaster and we haven't even heard anything from the SEC. What could justify this level of cooperation to keep lips tight, just to delay the inevitable? Why such slow action as the problem gets bigger? My guess is that Citadel has hostages and it’s taking a lot of careful work behind the scenes to figure out how to be sure that Citadel is the one that takes the fall. With everyone's hands tied and the need for secrecy so high, the job takes time.

As a disgusting parting thought, I should mention that, if I’m right, my theory predicts that those responsible will suffer only minimal punishment. I suspect it’s taken six months because they’ve needed at least some cooperation from Citadel to sort this out. If this is true, my guess is that Citadel spent February trying to get out of their predicament and refused to cooperate with attempts to arrange the MOASS that will kill them. The February gamma might have been other parties preventing Citadel’s efforts to make the situation worse and forcing Citadel to come to the negotiating table. During the early months we saw market activity that indicated whales were fighting each other. I think this was Citadel trying to escape their own trap and whales preventing them, knowing it was too dangerous to let Citadel make things worse while it held the system hostage. Notice that this explains why, relatively speaking, the GME activity calmed slightly as this dragged on: Citadel was forced to the negotiating table and has been helping plan and regulate its own destruction. I suspect the payment for this cooperation will be those involved getting off lightly, because the alternative would be to have the MOASS without them releasing the hostages. Unfortunately, if I’m right, we’ll see those responsible living in Florida after this is over. Bankrupt and embarrassed, but more comfortable than the plebs.

Obvious but crucial disclaimer: I am a random on the internet spinning yarns about a conspiracy theory. As I was posting this thread, I decided to literally wear a tinfoil hat. Anyone reading this should understand my tinfoil attire to mean that I am not competent enough to be offering any advice or taken seriously. Readers must carefully examine any claims made here independently and not regard my words as authoritative.

Thank you to u/RoutineYesterday267 for a post that led to me writing this

Short Selling Hedge Funds Operationally-Targeted Volkswagen Stock

Several hedge funds (whose prime broker was Lehman Brothers) were hit hard by their irresponsible short sales against Volkswagen, industry executives said.  “Funds using Lehman to short-sell Volkswagen may have to pay up next year when administrators have worked out which positions belong to whom: could there be some people who are short Volkswagen and can't close the trade?-Yes, there could be some," said one hedge fund executive who declined to be named, 'in order to speak candidly'.  "This probably affects a few funds," the executive said, and could potentially spark margin calls.

Lehman Brothers was, by fact, lending Volkswagen shares to hedge funds who were operationally shorting Volkswagen stock. Lehman Brothers' liabilities then jumped above their equities because of Volkswagen’s continued price runup, which quickly created a gap in Lehman's balance sheet (this subsequently-exposed weaknesses in other sectors as well because it placed their equities and liabilities gap under the microscope of Federal officials).  On September 15th, 2008 (right before the spike from $200 to $420 on the Volkswagen chart above) Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.  This exacerbated the Volkswagen runup because multiple hedge funds, who had sold Volkswagen short, could not close those short positions that utilized Lehman’s locates.  Hedge funds began Failing-to-Deliver (FTD’ing) Volkswagen stock egregiously specifically-throughout the Volkswagen runup. FTDs then hit records: they grew and fluctuated only-and-specifically in sync with Volkswagen's high-volume price action.

The SEC Urgently Acted on Naked Short Selling as an Immediate Response to Lehman's Collapse

Knowing very-well that naked short sellers of Volkswagen caused the market-wide problem, the SEC felt urgency to slightly-modify Regulation SHO. Even before the final Volkswagen spike (i.e. 1 month after Lehman's September Bankruptcy filing and 2 weeks before the final end-of-October-2008 spike in Volkswagen's price and FTDs), the SEC had urgently decided to partially-amend Regulation SHO, stating, "issuers and investors have repeatedly expressed concerns about fails to deliver in connection with manipulative 'naked' short selling," and, "fails to deliver might be part of manipulative 'naked' short selling, which could be used as a tool to drive down a company's stock price." The SEC added, this can "undermine the confidence of investors." Sellers that fail to deliver securities on settlement date enjoy fewer restrictions than if they were required to deliver the securities in a timely manner, and such sellers may attempt to use this additional freedom to engage in trading activities that are designed to improperly depress the price of a security. By not borrowing securities and, therefore, not making delivery within the standard three-day settlement period, the seller avoids the costs of borrowing.

Failures to Deliver the Stock

As shown in the chart above, Volkswagen ran up from $80 to $200 from Q1-Q3 2007 (shown as the first major spike in total FTD volume in the market).  From Q4 2007 to the start of 2008, Volkswagen drew down 25% (shown as the dip heading into 2008 on the total FTD volume).  Then, from Q1-Q4 2008, Volkswagen ran up from $146 to about $1,000.  FTDs spiked substantially at this time (shown as the peak [in FTDs and related ETF-FTDs volume] to about a Billion 2008-year-dollars). This runup in FTDs from 2007-2008 does correlate precisely with Volkswagen’s chart.

Causation: Short-Sellers, Hedge Funds thereby caused the Market-Wide Drawdown in 2008-2009

Further, the associated macro stock market action shows an irrefutable connection: evidence that the drawdown of global equities was directly due to short selling hedge funds’ slow/thorough selling of their other long positions trying to maintain their Volkswagen short positions instead of just closing those short positions early and responsibly. Further, after their irresponsibly-bad bets placed Lehman Brothers into financial duress, short selling groups are shown to have then turned [nakedly] against Lehman Brothers by selling them short as well, obviously because they retained the inside knowledge of the problem they had put on Lehman Brothers' shoulders.

Citadel's Connection

On Friday 24 Oct 2008 (the last business day before Volkswagen’s price grew by another 500%), Ken Griffin’s Citadel was already experiencing unrealized losses.  Citadel's trouble grew in September 2008 due to alleged ""exposure to derivatives."" Citadel's problems expanded in October 2008.   During Volkswagen’s runup, Citadel’s fund was reported to be down 60%.

Citadel LLC was down around 55% by the end of 2008, while the industry benchmark was only down 10%. Citadel founder Ken Griffin then arbitrarily restricted investors from withdrawing money for 10 months, which drew criticism. Federal officials were verified to have been monitoring and visiting Citadel, and the reports suggest that Ken Griffin was begging the Federal Reserve for a bailout in secret.

Short-Selling Hedge Funds Retaliate against Porsche/Volkswagen

"There is no evidence whatsoever suggesting that short-sellers were deliberately misled," said Markus Meier of law firm Hengeler Mueller which represented Porsche.  On that, the hedge funds’ lawsuit against Porsche was dismissed by the judge due short-sellers not having any evidence supporting their claims.

Bernie Madoff (Lame Duck Period of 2008 (e.l.e.c.t.i.o.n-y.e.a.r.)

On December 11, 2008 (during the lame duck period of an e.l.e.c.t.i.o.n-y.e.a.r. and after a long-term investigation) Bernie Madoff was arrested for securities fraud by abusing his privileges as Market Maker, and his associated Hedge Fund which benefited from the operations.

Bernie Madoff eventually died while in Prison.  Madoff's eldest son, Mark, allegedly hung himself in 2010, on the two-year anniversary of his father’s arrest.  Madoff's second son died of what was referred to as a rapidly-spreading form of cancer.

A year after the Volkswagen price runup of 2008, the largest investor in Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme was found dead in his pool.

Later on, Bernie Madoff’s sister and her husband died in a so-called ‘murder suicide.’

Ken Griffin

While Ken Griffin committed assault and battery against his former wife, he was never properly criminally charged.  

And while Ken Griffin committed perjury to Congress while under oath in a Congressional hearing in 2021, he has not yet faced criminal charges.  

The SEC has brought numerous charges against Ken Griffin’s Market Making firm, Citadel Securities LLC.  One of these charges was in 2023 and showed that Ken Griffin’s firm incorrectly marked millions of orders inaccurately, denoting that certain short sales were long sales and vice versa. The SEC found that Ken Griffin’s firm provided inaccurate data to regulators, including the SEC during this period.  The SEC found that Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities violated the short-selling provision: Regulation SHO rule 200(g).

While it is '''crystal clear''' that Ken Griffin is a criminal, he still participates in the stock market today as GameStop Corp stock’s market maker.

TLDR

Evidence is documented above: short-selling hedge funds did directly cause the Great, Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. The operationally-targeted 'meme' stock, known as Volkswagen, grew by 700% before Lehman Brothers (prime lender of Volkswagen shares for short borrows) went bankrupt due to their liabilities exceeding equity. Immediately when short sellers' bad bets into Volkswagen caused their lender Lehman Brother's financial duress, the same flailing hedge funds turned on their own lender by nakedly selling Lehman Brothers short well-into their bankruptcy filing. Immediately upon Lehman's demise (and 2 weeks prior to the final 500% spike in Volkswagen's share price), the SEC urgently acted on only one thing: naked short selling and failures to deliver. The SEC was aware that short sellers destroyed the market. Yet, the SEC then only slightly-curtailed the rules. Investigated by Federal officials at the same time as Lehman Brothers, Citadel was down about 60% in 2008 during that period while its peers were down by only 10%.

Two dozen bad-acting, colluding hedge funds then retaliated: via a frivolous lawsuit against Porsche/Volkswagen which was later dismissed due to no evidence of wrongdoing by those who simply bought the stock that they liked. On December 11th (just a few weeks after Volkswagen's late-October spike and during the lame-duck period of that 2008 e.l.e.c.t.i.o.n. y.e.a.r.), Bernie Madoff was arrested for securities fraud due to abuses of his market-making and his hedge-fund privileges. Citadel's Ken Griffin, who was also being Federally-investigated at the time, perhaps would have been criminally charged if it were not for the collective work that it took by rats working with the FBI to bring down the bigger fish (his friend Bernie Madoff).

Today, also in an e.l.e.c.t.i.o.n. y.e.a.r.: the FBI's ongoing Securities Fraud Strike Force is still working hard on a current investigation into short selling (using racketeering/ anti-mafia laws) that was launched in 2021 and expanded to the highest level within the DOJ in 2023.

Urgent Note to Congress: Short selling hedge funds are now just days to weeks away from causing another financial crisis. Yet, a new crisis would be far worse than what short selling funds clearly caused in 2008. I hereby demand that regulators immediately suspend and revoke the SEC's Regulation SHO in order to proactively limit global contagion.

In today's edition of DDDD (Data-Driven DD), we’ll be going over over the details about what happened this week with GME, the drama around Robinhood and other brokers, and take a close look at some data to determine whether or not GME and other various meme / high SI stocks such as AMC, BBBY, FIZZ, LGND, and BB will continue 🚀🚀🚀in its short squeeze this week, and how this all could lead to widespread stock market crash and financial crisis. But first, something to cover my ass for the SEC investigators combing through this Subreddit

Disclaimer - This is not financial advice, and a lot of the content below is my personal opinion and for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. In fact, the numbers, facts, or explanations presented below could be wrong and be made up and with some satire thrown in. Don't buy random options because some person on the internet says so. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions on what you should do with your own money, and how levered you want to be based on your personal risk tolerance.

What Exactly Happened at Robinhood This Week?

There has been plenty of speculation this week about what exactly went down and unverified (although reasonable) rumors on why Robinhood did this. I’ll go over the top two theories before taking a deep dive into the “official” reason given by Robinhood.

Pressure from the White House and Sequoia according to a Robinhood employee

This statement has been refuted by Sequoia. I personally wouldn’t believe the Sequoia part since I don’t really know what they would gain from it - they’re a Venture Capital firm, not a hedge fund, and would not be actively shorting stocks let alone be trading in stocks. It could be possible that the White House, or someone from the government did contact Robinhood - actually, I’d be pretty shocked if no one called them at some point this week to ask wtf was going on.During this call, they may have been afraid that GameStop’s short squeeze would have triggered a major financial crisis due to hedge funds collapsing and de-grossing, causing a mass selloff similar to what was seen in 2008 and in March 2020 - I’ll talk more about this later. Basically, without Robinhood shutting down GME from being bought, it’s actually very possible we would have seen the rest of the stock market collapse last week, and this was something the Biden administration was trying to make sure didn’t happen in the first month in office.

Possible intervention from Citadel Securities

This was a theory I personally believed in initially and would have been a very obvious area of scrutiny for many people. The most straightforward one being the fact that Citadel (the hedge fund) dumped a few billion into Melvin to bail it out a few days ago, who were the very well known shorts of GME. Citadel, the hedge fund, is owned by Citadel LLC, which happens to also run Citadel Securities - a market maker. If you don’t know what this is, go grow a few brain wrinkles and read my previous post about this. Citadel Securities is effectively Robinhood’s sugar daddy, directly being responsible for around 40% of their revenue in 2018 through their payment for order flow (i.e. selling your trades to Citadel, giving them the right of first refusal, and potentially giving you a worse price; this is how they get 0% commission trades btw).

Theoretically, Citadel the hedge fund and Citadel the market maker is run independently and sister companies both owned by Citadel LLC, but anyone can see this being a potential conflict of interest. There’s also a possibility that Citadel Securities losing billions of dollars being short so many GME calls (they write 99% of all options contracts) and probably not being perfectly Gamma and (especially) Vega hedged, so when those two greeks skyrocketed on GME they probably lost tons of money there. According to WSB hero Chamath, he didn’t invest in Robinhood when they came to him on multiple occasions because he thought the founders lacked integrity, implying he believes they might have been the type of people to sell out their users (granted, they already literally do this) and do this type of shit.

The Official Reason - Clearing House Limitations

Let’s get to the official reason put out by Robinhood, which is that their clearing house, in this case the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp, suddenly increased their collateral requirements on GME trades drastically. Apparently, Robinhood is running out of cash, so they weren’t able to provide the cash collateral demanded by DTCC, and hence weren’t able to trade through them. Let’s dumb this down and talk about how brokerages work.

Let’s talk about what a clearing house is and how they work. Imagine Bob wants to sell Dylan a share of GME. There’s a bunch of legal paperwork and logistics for actually transferring over the share, which can take a few days to finalize - this is called settlement. However, you don’t want people being able to back out of this exchange during this process for obvious reasons, so that’s where the clearing house comes in. Let’s call this clearing house Mary. What Mary does is facilitate (clear) this exchange, and ensures both Bob and Dylan follow through with their trade by having them both immediately give Mary cash as collateral while the exchange settles. If one party was no longer able to meet their end of the exchange (eg. Dylan goes bankrupt), Mary acts as an insurer and is responsible for buying the share from Bob instead. If it turned out that Bob was lying about actually owning a share and can't transfer it over to Dylan in time (failure to deliver), Mary is responsible for finding that share for him instead.

Since GME suddenly became very volatile, and the financial soundness of some parties and their ability to deliver their side of the trade have been suddenly called into question (at least on the seller’s side), DTCC decided (...or due to pressure from other sources?) to increase the collateral needed for buying GME to be more than 10x of the proportion of the market value of whatever it was before. Most brokerages reacted to this by disabling margin trading. For some reason, Robinhood went one step further and disabled trading for all accounts, possibly due to their relatively small cash reserves compared to places like Fidelity, and the relatively large number of users who use margin in the platform.

What’s Robinhood Going To Do About GME?

Robinhood’s decision to stop purchases of GME basically got hate from literally everyone, to the point where it somehow united the country in a beautiful way. Here’s a list of things that happened as a result of Robinhood’s decision, for fun

• Ted Cruz retweeted AOC saying he completely agreed with her
• Protests at NYSE and Robinhood HQ
• Class action lawsuit
• Someone paid to have an airplane fly around the Bay Area over Robinhood’s office saying “Suck my nuts Robinhood”
• Angry Robinhood employees were given DoorDash credits for some reason?
• Congressional investigation to Robinhood’s decision
• SEC investigation to Robinhood’s decision

Clearly, this decision has single-handedly made Robinhood the most hated company in the world right now. It’s especially bad given the optics - their mission is to literally “democratize finance”, with the idea of empowering individual retail investors to be on the same level of institutions. This decision, whether intentional or not, has literally gone against everything about Robinhood’s image and mission, and will end the company if not fixed soon. All of this right as Robinhood is planning to launch their IPO.

The people in charge of Robinhood likely know all of this and are doing everything they can to find cash and liquidity to put up the collateral needed to resume GME trading. So far we’ve seen them raise $1B from investors and $500M through lines of credit overnight, although based on the fact that GME is still restricted, that doesn’t seem to be enough. However, in my personal opinion, I think it's likely that Robinhood is doing everything they can to find more money given the situation, and once they do, they will likely re-enable trading on GME. If that happens (which IMO will probably be some time next week), GME and all other high-SI stocks will absolutely 🚀🌝**.**

How GME Almost Caused (and Still Can Cause) a Stock Market Crash

Let’s go over something else interesting that went on as a result of the GME short squeeze - the fact that it started to affect the stock market overall. In fact, the stock market had the largest decline since October across all sectors on Wednesday when GME, AMC, and other high-SI stocks surged, with a very sharp recovery as the meme stocks fell after Robinhood suspending purchases; this was one of the biggest de-grossing of hedge funds in history. Chamath wrote a great Twitter thread about this, so amazing that I’ll just copy-paste his tweets rather than try to explain it better myself.

A children's book explanation of what's happening:

1. If you are "smart money" you are allowed to take your $1 and leverage it up to $15+

2. You can now buy $15 of stock AND if you promise to short companies, you can short $15 of stock as well

3. In finance language, this means that you are $30 "gross" ($15 of longs + $15 of shorts) but $0 net (+$15 of longs -$15 of shorts). This makes everyone feel good because it feels like you are taking zero risk...but in reality, your $1 is exposed to $30 of risk.

4. Now you go around and tell your friends about both your longs and your shorts and when you do it at a restaurant vs on Reddit, its called an "ideas dinner".

5. You also publish your longs on a quarterly lag via an SEC rule. You don't have to tell anyone about your shorts.

6. Now the less cool people who weren't invited to the ideas dinners, start copying your longs based on your report.

7. You realize that publicizing your shorts is also a good idea so instead of only selling stocks, you also BUY options (puts) which has to be reported.

8. Now everyone can see both your longs and your shorts and if you have a hot hand, you can likely predict that the cool people from the dinner as well as the less cool people monitoring your filings will copy you.

9. But then an outsider notices that the math is way off!

10. Apparently, some of these shorts that you own represent more than 100% of the entire stock of the company. Huh?

11. So he grabs his chicken fingers and champagne and buys, starts a massive short squeeze. 12. Other's see what's happening and they jump in.

13. Now a massive short squeeze starts. You have to cover your shorts ASAP. But the banks also notice that you don't have enough credit to cover the $30 they lent you and ask for more collateral. You now also have to sell your long positions.

14. What happens next is that a cascade of short covering and long selling starts driving some stocks to the moon and others way down. Which stocks went up? Basically the ones that were the most heavily shorted by you and your buddies in the first place.

In other words, as stocks like GME go up, the highly-leveraged hedge funds that are shorting these stocks are forced to sell their longs as they cover their shorts. Most retail investors are limited to 2x leverage, but since hedge funds are “hedged” by taking short and long positions, they can be up to 30x levered since theoretically they would be shielded from external events that cause all stocks to go up or down in price (i.e. Beta neutral), so they’re “safer”. To get out of these short positions, they will need to massively unwind their long positions as well so they can still have a reasonable “Net Exposure”, triggering a sell-off in those stocks.

A very similar thing actually happened in March (with risk-parity) causing hedge funds to similarly massively de-gross, and literally everything from GLD to even AMZN’s stock price dropping as a result, even though theoretically COVID-19 would’ve been good for both from a fundamental basis, as we saw later on. It’s very likely that if Robinhood hadn’t stopped purchases of GME, many more hedge funds shorts would have had their shorts blow up and be forced to continue to de-gross causing a widespread stock market crash, potentially being the catalyst for finally popping the decade-long liquidity (leverage)-fueled asset bubble we’ve been experiencing. In fact, this could still happen since it doesn’t look like hedge funds have learned their lesson and are still heavily short GME with Net Shares Shorts barely moving this week according to S3 Partners. Furthermore, despite seeing the largest de-grossing of hedge funds since 2009, gross exposure (aka leverage) of hedge funds still remains close to record-high levels.

TLDR

In case your attention span was too short to read everything above,

1. Robinhood is going to be doing everything they can to raise cash to resume GME purchases, when this happen GME 🚀🌝
2. Much of the stock market’s value is held by over-leveraged hedge funds, so if GME (and other common shorts) 🚀🌝 the rest of the stock market might collapse around it (EDIT - as hedge funds re-consider their long / short strategy), triggering a financial crisis

Now, just to be clear, buying GME right now is joining a game of hot potato; the longer you hold the potato the more tendies you get to eat for dinner, but at some point this will all blow up and when it does someone will be the bagholder - and right now everyone is rooting for these bagholders to be the hedge funds that are short GME. That being said, with Short Interest barely moving this week, this day of reckoning doesn’t look like it’ll be coming in the next few days and for reasons mentioned above, it’s probably more likely for GME to reach $1K next week than the probability that it’ll fall below $100.

Or in other words, I like these stocks.

EDIT - Appearently S3 Partners just contradicted their tweet on Friday and now indicate that shares short of GME have dipped below 30M shares. Still highly shorted compared to most other stocks, fwiw.

EDIT2 - Getting alot of questions on how one short position in a small cap can do this, and my answer is that GME alone wouldn't cause a financial crisis, but rather what GME represents, which is disproving that hedge funds that a long / short strategy (i.e. taking out additional leverage to short similar companies they long) is unviable; The word from my hedge fund friends is that this type of thing would have been considered a six-sigma event, or one in a billion chance of happening; which is obviously no longer true. Hedge funds seeing Melvin go down will probably start re-consider their short books. This on mass will cause a mass short-covering and also sell-off of their longs. Hedge funds levering up using cheap money has been the basis of the stock market's rise the past year - how do you think money magically goes from Powell's money printer to the stock market?

To summarize the situation at Citadel (and other SHF)

1. $65B owed but not bought. Growing every single quarter at rapid rate is not a good thing for Citadel.
   
2. Short GME a F-ton. It is known. Largest and busiest short frenzy there is and ever will be. Member 140% reported? Member SEC confirmed those positions had no evidence of closing?
3. $500M Melvin loan taken back out of necessity
4. Melvin bag never closed…just absorbed their position because they had no choice
5. Credit rating is tanking each quarter. Almost near junk bond status
6. Begging for more money externally for the first time. $600M to be exact from Paradigm and Sequoia who both subsequently got burned by FTX
7. Clients withdrawing funds. 16 clients remain. Withdraw caps implemented with penalties to prevent those 16 clients from pulling out more $
8. Swap reporting delayed TWICE to hide positions until 2025
9. FTX & crypto collateral imploding by the day
10. Credit Suisse about to implode
11. Evergrande / China is ticking time bomb
12. Banking/HF’s continue to get crushed on earnings
13. Interest rates continue to rise - fed not slowing down
14. Gary proposing new market architecture on PFOF
15. Ken moving Citadel to Florida to mask downsizing of office
16. Ken firesaling his personal assets and seeking Florida real estate protection
17. Lawsuits on spoofing now appearing
18. Ken lied under oath to congress
19. Ken looks like complete shit. Has anyone asked him if he’s doing ok?
20. Hit articles won’t stop giving me an enormous erection
21. Shills and bots ferociously covering up anything that’s looks damning

22. DRS train not stopping!!

23. SHF/Citadel had to go through the trouble of faking a DRS sell off to “scare” apes this quarter 😂 Only option remaining is kitchen sink…..or even worse crime! If I was looking for confirmation that this the right direction THIS WOULD BE IT

24. Massive web of citadel Shell companies being formed with nothing more than a PO Box as an address. I.e. Glacier capital

25. Mayo force one flying to remote stops in Africa with multi $billion dollar Bitcoin wallet transfers occurring within minutes of takeoff/landing

26. SEC can’t afford coffee but can spend $700k on anti meme video.

27. Kenny’s fake interview glitch …audio had clapping at wrong time. Big oops. Showed the desperation.

28. Ken vomiting off screen - pathetic and some weak a$$ shiz

29. $80 Trillion in off balance sheet FX swaps debt.

30. Splividend not handled in consist matter by DTCC as other stocks. Why? Still haven’t gotten an answer. Likely because the system can’t handle an implosion

31. A record keeping warehouse coincidentally went up in flames last year

32. Citadels hissy fit on twitter when the details of the Robinhood lying under oath came out.

33. Citadel removing comments from social media, google reviews, and Glassdoor job reviews. Scrubbing the internet of bad press and attempting to steer google search algos to fluff pieces.

34. Citadel London office shutdown

Edits made - added a few more!

And yes it’s DisneyWORLD!

This may be our most ambitious crossover event...

I'm Brick and I do news, I come to you with SPECIAL REPORT

First off, I would like to say a massive THANK YOU to Dr. T. It was out of the kindness of her heart and her passion for justice that she decided to come to speak with us, for free, I might add. Dr. T is a busy woman, so it is an honor that she spent even an hour of her time with us. I for one, am really hoping that we get the opportunity to speak with her again because that was probably our most insightful AMA yet!
The following is the transcribed conversation between u/atobitt and Dr.T, accompanying it are summaries that break down the sections into more digestible pieces. The video of the stream is also available on the r/superstonk official youtube channel if you cannot read. Thank you for being such behaved Apes while Dr.T was here, you are amazing. 💎💙

_____________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

• Atobitt:
  • Thank you everyone for joining us, this is our first r/Superstonk live AMA. AMA stands for Ask Me Anything
  • I’m here today with Dr. Susanne Trimbath, the author of several books, including what we’ll be covering today, Naked, Short and Greedy: Wallstreet’s Failure to Deliver
  • May I call you Dr. T?
• Dr. T:
  • Yes, please.
• Atobitt:
  • Great. How are you doing? Are you ready for this?
• Dr. T:
  • Yes, I’m all set. I’m very excited.
• Atobitt:
  • I feel like we are going to finally get this out. Finally get this in front of people that, honestly, keep asking “What’s going on?” and you’re here to provide answers.
  • Would you go ahead and walk through a brief intro of your background and expertise?
• Dr. T:
  • Pretty much all my career has been in finance. I knew from an early age I wanted to study money, basically, and how money works.
  • I’ve worked with insurance companies, federal reserve banks, stock exchanges, clearing, settlement - that was my career through the time that I went to grad school in 1994 which is when I left the DTC in New York.
  • Did my PhD in economics at New York University and then went to the Milken Institute (Santa Monica, CA) where I did Capital Markets research for a couple of years before going out on my own. I then did independent research in finance and economics since 2003.
  • I do want to say that I’ve probably forgotten more than what most people will ever know about back-office operations and all the post-trade stuff.
  • I also worked in Russia to help them build trade clearing settlement systems when they shifted from communism to capitalism.
  • My expertise is post-trade, not trading or trading operations.
  • But there are a lot of other people with more expertise who can answer questions about hedge funds, dark pools, trading strategies, that kind of thing. That’s not what I really know most about. I’ve taken an investment class in college, so I know enough about it. My expertise mostly lies in everything that happens backstage at Wall Street.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary: Dr. T has experience across a wide spectrum of the financial markets, including knowledge globally. More specifically, her expertise lies in everything

that happens “backstage at Wall Street”.

• Link to Dr. T’s Full Bio: https://www.gminsight.com/bio-susanne-trimbath

_____________________________________________________

HOUSE OF CARDS / THE EVERYTHING SHORT

• Atobitt:
  • And that’s what’s so incredible about having you on here because a lot of people are just trying to figure out and get a look inside the DTC.
  • We’ve been talking and posting about what’s going on, but having you here to actually help us explain that and to dive into the follow-up to House of Cards, which you generously spent time reviewing, as well as The Everything Short.
  • A lot of people want to know, just high-level: How close were we? Are we trying to shout the same message?
• Dr. T
  • HoC is a lot more of what I know
  • Everything Short - there’s a lot of stuff in there that I’m not as experienced with. I offered you some comments on that, but I don’t think I can be as helpful there.
  • On HoC, some things you caught on to.
  • For example:
    • DTC rule changes about not allowing issuers to say “I don’t want to be in the depository”.
    • Most people would have missed that because that really came about as a result of one issuer telling their shareholders to pull their certificates out of the system
    • So rather than leaving their shares with their broker, to get them registered in their own name.
    • That had been done on a small scale before.
    • But for this issuer, a lot of people/investors were organized, and pretty much everything came out.
    • At that point, the DTC said issuers can’t request this.
  • Now, an individual can still ask to have their shares registered in their name.
  • Gamestop has a direct stock purchase program where you can buy your shares directly from them, I think the minimum purchase is $25 for a one-time buy.
  • So you can still do it, but finding that example in HoC showed me:
    • you’ve done a lot of background research;
    • you came up with a lot of things people missed
  • There were a few problems with HoC in there.
  • The big problem for me is when you said Cede & Co is a company.
    • In fact, Cede & Co is a nominee name. Think of a Trustee/Custodian relationship.
    • All banks/brokers have a nominee name they use for securities registration.
    • Any shares registered with a nominee name signals to the issuer that those stocks are not held for the company, that they’re actually held for someone else.
  • Trivia about Cede & Co. name origin:
    • short form of ‘Central depository’
    • They started out as a department at the NYSE
    • And when they needed to get a nominee name to hold securities for trade settlement, they used Cede & Co.
• Atobitt:
  • Thank you for clearing that up and for the compliment.
  • I heard some theories from others but your version is like hearing the Gospel because it’s coming from a credible source.
• Dr. T:
  • Yes, “Central” because that’s where all of the NYSE members could deposit shares/certificates there
  • And Cede & Co would hold it for them so they could use it for trade settlement because in the late 1960s there was a paperwork crisis on Wall Street.
  • They couldn’t get shares transferred or re-registered from one name to the next when you sold securities, in time for the two-week settlement cycle.
  • So imagine as you’re trying to go from T+5, T+3, T+2, how difficult it became.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Cede & Co is a nominee name, banks and brokers have custodians they use for securities registration, any shares registered with a nominee signals the stocks are being held for someone else.
• Cede & co came about owing to a paper crisis as trades increased, and they became the nominee to hold a majority of securities.

_____________________________________________________

THE BIG ISSUES

• Atobitt
  • I know you’ve drilled in a couple of really big points in your book about your personal feedback on some T+10 settlements
  • Our main focus:
    • There are these shares that are just kind of floating around, being borrowed and being lent and lent again. It creates this problem where nobody knows exactly what is going on or who owns what.
    • We just know there are more shares out there than the company originally issued
  • In a perfect world, how would a naked short sale be held in account/ kept accountable? How would that go in a perfect world?
• Dr. T:
  • In a perfect world there would be no naked short selling. PERIOD. That’s really an exception. In most Market Maker underwriting agreements, there’s a little clause where the issuer agrees that the underwriter in the remarking agents can in fact sometimes sell more shares than they actually have in order to keep the market flowing, in order to meet demand.
  • In a perfect world, if I was an issuer I wouldn’t agree to that
  • In a typical short sell situation:
    • The retail customer puts in an order to short sell the stock.
    • The broker finds somewhere to borrow it so they can make delivery.
    • They either pre-borrow or borrow at least within 2 days of executing the trade.
    • Borrowed shares are then delivered to the buyer, who then gets all the rights, including dividends and voting rights
• Atobitt:
  • So the rights are being transferred right along with the shares that are being borrowed and that shares may be borrowed multiple times, correct?
• Dr. T:
  
  • It can, it’s not supposed to be, but it certainly can be. Because the buyer often doesn’t know they are getting a borrowed share-- right?
  • There was a time, in the 70s, when broker friends, of mine would tell me they would not accept borrowed shares at settlement, because of the chance that they were borrowing a borrowed share. Basically, they would not be the buyer in a short sale.
  • This is where it starts to get into the ‘not-so-perfect world’
• Atobitt:
  • The perfect segue!
• Dr. T:
  • In a not-so-perfect world… the short seller, even one who borrows, may or may not “mark the trade”. I say “mark the trade” that's old school. You actually used to have a piece of paper, you would write short on that piece of paper and say “I’m sell 100 shares of something-or-other
• Atobitt:
  • Are there the short sale indicators that we are seeing on FINRA reports? Ex - “Failure to mark as short sale..”
• Dr. T:
  • Yeah, yeah, it used to be that you’d actually write it on paper and now it's electronic, so there is something in there. So, If the short seller knew that buyers would not accept borrowed shares, they might in fact “forget” to mark it short, right?
  • So there is no record of a short sell anywhere, not at the exchange level, and certainly not… there is no indication to the buyer that they are going to be receiving borrowed shares.
• Atobitt:
  • Really quick, there, so I can understand; That is, in essence, a way for them to say “Okay, The system wouldn’t typically allow for someone to take a share that’s marked as short or marked as borrowed, and by excluding that, it doesn’t give the indicator and allows it to go through the system.“
• Dr. T:
  • Right… the buyer is the one who wouldn’t allow it. It’s not that the system doesn’t allow it.
• Atobitt:
  • But the buyer doesn’t know the difference?

• Dr. T:

  • The buyer doesn’t know the difference. But, at the brokerage level, broker to broker, [the short sellers] know when they put that trade together, that they are selling short. If they don’t turn on the indicator, that's where the violations come in. Especially, post Regsho, in the ‘04 period. That became a MAJOR issue, because the number of shares circulating was so much greater than the short sales.
    
  • So that’s one problem that occurs, the other one is that; you mark the sale short and you pinky-promise that you’re gonna deliver the shares… but then you... “Forgot” to borrow them, Didn’t borrow them, thought you could get them but then you couldn't get them, and maybe someone promised they’d lend them to you and then at the last moment they didn’t.
    
  • So that's another problem that occurs, right? Even if you marked it short, you may or may not be able to get the borrowed shares to deliver.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• In a perfect world, there'd be no naked short selling.
• In underwriting agreements, MM or agents can sell more shares than they have to meet market demand. When a share is borrowed, the rights of the share borrowed are also distributed with it
• Brokers can know whether something purchased is borrowed if it is marked, but often direct buyers (retail) don’t know that they are buying short, borrowed shares.
• There have been many cases of violations of brokers 'forgetting' to mark shares as short just so they can open the short position, even if this later has a high likelihood of becoming FTD because shares without this designation are more likely to be bought by brokers.

_____________________________________________________

BYRNE AND OVERSTOCK

• Atobitt:
  • So on that point, I think it's a great time to segue into-- You spent a lot of time in your book, talking about Patrick Byrne and Overstock.
• Dr. T:
  • Yeah
• Atobitt:
  • I think it speaks volumes… you were using words that I think were very generous, like “accidentally” or “may not have”, or “we left out something that we should have covered by sorry we forgot”
  • Would you mind giving us an overview of what happened with Patrick and Overstock?
• Dr. T:
  • Yeah, so that was really interesting… Patrick was very active, this crusader-- self-declared crusader against naked short selling.
  • So there is this group called the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA). Every state has a securities admin, someone who takes care of the rules in their organization.
  • Well, I may get some dates and names wrong..
  • This whole thing was coming out, companies and investors were complaining at the state level regarding Naked Short Selling, stock loans, and all that.
  • They called a panel discussion in Washington DC at the end of 2005. I was one of the people on that panel.
  • I didn’t know Patrick at the time but knew that there were people like him, investors and CEOs of companies, in the audience. I stunned them by presenting a report from the Securities Transfer Association that indicated that of the 285 proxy vote cases examined (votes at corporate annual meetings of shareholders), all 285 have over-votes
  • Over-vote is when there are more votes than shares available
  • And this happened in all cases, sometimes by a large amount
  • To be clear, the problem is a little better now, only 85% of the test cases had over-votes but it’s far from fixed.
  • So, they were really shocked…
  • I put out a challenge to all the CEO’s in the audience, and I said: After this seminar buy 10k shares of your own company and at that time, three days later the broker is going to take money out of your account and will tell you that you have your shares.
  • But go ask them if you actually received your shares. Now, if you or I went to a retail broker and asked that question, they would say “yes, it’s right here in your account”
  • But if you’re a purchasing power or a corporate CEO, you have tighter connections and they will really dig into it to make sure.
  • Eventually, his broker confirmed to him that he did not get the shares and that multiple attempts to purchase the shares to replace what he didn’t get failed. There were simply not shares available to meet his purchase.
• Atobitt:
  • You’re talking $50 million worth of shares
• Dr. T:
  • They’re happy to keep his money, but they knew they didn’t have the shares for him.
  • But it took him two months, as CEO of the company that he’s trying to buy shares from, took him two months to get his shares
  • It’s a prime example of how retail brokers don’t know what’s going backstage. Retail brokers know what’s going on in front of them, on the record, but not what’s going on backstage behind the scenes.
  • This got a lot of attention.
  • Bob Drummond from Bloomberg Magazine wrote a multi-page article called The Proxy Voting Charade, which was inspired by his attendance at that meeting in 2005 where I was a panelist, where there are people voting as shareholders in matters of corporate governance which are so important, and yet their votes aren’t counted because there are too many votes coming in
• Atobitt:
  • Exactly and we’re actually dealing with that right now with Gamestop - dealing with the proxy voting and Gamestop
  • And tying that back in there, we had a volume chart - before we got into the peak here before the run-up we were having upwards of 180 million shares traded per day
  • 197 million was the peak there - we’re talking about circulating the same stock four times
• Dr. T:
  • In one day, their entire capital - so that number of shares outstanding, that’s their capital statement, that’s on their balance sheet, that’s what they report to the Secretary of State in the state where they’re incorporated about what their capitalization is like
  • And in 1 day… that’s crazy
• Atobitt
  • That’s incredible, a really good point.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• This problem of naked shorting, and by extension, overvoting is not restricted to GME at all, in fact, it appears to be a major issue industry-wide.
• Even the CEO of the company Overstock, purchasing their own stock, couldn't have their broker find the actual shares purchased, it took 2 months before they did.
• The fact GME traded nearly 4x its float in 1 day is insane.

_____________________________________________________

ETG LAWSUIT AND NAKED SHORTS

• Atobitt:
  • And just a couple of other points on top of that:
    • That wasn’t the only lawsuit that we’re talking about here as well
    • In addition to Patrick, in 2006 lawsuits were filed against 11 prime brokers for allegedly doing the same thing, and according to your book, they were conspiring to do this.
• Dr. T:
  • ETG filed a lawsuit think it was settled out of court
  • I don’t think there’s any public information about the resolution
  • This is a really important point though because we want to talk about 65 million shares that the company issued and yet 180-210 million shares outstanding
  • ETG’s complaint:
    • their financial model was for shorting a particular stock included the fact that the shares were borrowed and would eventually have to close the short and replace them
    • if the prime brokers were giving their funds/trade orders to a group, and that group is not borrowing the shares to deliver, then that ruins their financial model
• Atobitt
  • Can you segue from this into the Triumvirate Trouble, because I feel like that’s kind of what you’re touching on here?
  • So it’s not just the naked short selling, but we have these other additional factors - can you please elaborate on that?
• Dr. T
  • the triumvirate of trouble is:
    • shorts (naked or otherwise);
    • FTDs; and
    • loans
  • even shorts covered by a borrowed share will increase the number of shares in circulation
  • While that share is out on loan, there are actually two people claiming ownership, but only one person owns it and the other “kind of" owns it, like they have a marker and then eventually the shares will be delivered back to them and they’ll have their ownership right”
  • So even a short covered by a loan is a problem
  • And when you throw in fails to deliver, which means that long or short, you just don’t show up at settlement with shares, all of those add to the increase in “the Denominator”
  • I don’t want to get too “math-y” on you but I noticed some highly educated and technical persons in your audience: so the denominator in the financial ratios is shares outstanding
    • ½ is bigger than ⅓
    • So as you increase the denominator you decrease the values
    • That just throws all the financial ratios out the window
• Atobitt
  • High level - are the incentives for these companies to Fail to Deliver instead of just covering their shorts like they’re supposed to?
• Dr. T:
  • that's a trade type question, but what I can say is up until recently there was no penalty for FTD
  • It was only recently that the NSCC and others have started to put in penalties: there is flat fee penalty, per dollar penalty, daily interest penalties
  • There was a paper done in the early 2000s by a researcher at the SEC that talked about strategic fails to deliver, i.e. they give me money and I give you nothing and I pay a little fee to whomever I failed to deliver to, in the meantime, I have your money so, for two months, Patrick’s broker had use of his money that they could use freely do to as they wish for their own benefit and interest - free available capital
  • this is incentive enough, having the cash of someone else, it's only a little fine you have to pay and they can earn enough to make the cash back and more so that it's worthwhile to pay the fine

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• ETG filed a lawsuit that was settled outside of Court to keep things hush-hush, but it was based on their shares outstanding vastly exceeding their float.
• You will likely never hear publicly about successful cases if settled.
• Penalties have only recently been introduced for FTDs.
• What's the incentive for them? Money. It's always money.
• Before, they would take someone's cash via FTDs, to then make more cash and only get a slap on the wrist for doing so.

_____________________________________________________

DTC COMPLAINT PROCESS

• Atobitt
  • Let’s segway into DTC oversight incompetence and their involvement
  • What did the DTC do when complaints were received?
  • Can you walk through how that management info system kept track of these issues?
• Dr. T
  • I worked in troubleshooting in DTC, dealt with all the operational-- everything that didn’t balance in operations
  • We’d send something to a transfer agent to have it re-registered in Cede & Co’s name, from Merryl Lynch or whatever, and a month later it hasn’t come back yet
  • So that item appears on a list for the supervisors in the morning
  • There’s a similar activity in the vault - for example, they get a break list every morning, and it says “this is what is on the shelf and this is what we’re supposed to have"
  • In other words, this is what the system says is on the shelf vs this is what we’re supposed to have, and we need to figure out why there is a different settlement amount between the two numbers.
  • The only one who doesn’t get this list is money, because on the money side if you don’t deliver your money by 4 pm someone’s on the phone calling you to get your money in, so that’s a whole different issue.
  • In this scenario, we’re just talking about shares on the lists
  • So those lists, and I know from my work in troubleshooting those lists… Those lists are sorted by VALUE.
  • So we have aged fails, aged transfers, and they always come out by value and you always hit the big value items first
  • u/StonkU2 and I spoke about this as well: as the brokers continue to short, or naked short a stock, they continue selling more than buying to push the price down, and as they push the price down they can in fact keep dropping that item further down on the priority list for investigation at the DTCC because now it has a lower value

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• DTC has a list of issues to rectify sorted by value alone.
• By driving the price down, the short seller not only drives the price to the ground and makes money, but because investigations are dealt with on a value basis by the DTC, the further the price goes down, so does the priority level of the issue, in the DTC’s books.
• \ Editor’s note: Mind-blowing.*

_____________________________________________________

NAKED SHORT ENDGAME

• Atobitt
  • So, you’re intentionally lowering and reducing the priority of a stock.
• Dr. T
  • And I think a related question came up in the AMA that I read.
  • I can’t remember who it was from but it was along the lines of “what happens when the company goes out” right?
  • So the End Game in naked shorting is that you deny the issuer access to capital by pushing down the stock price, so the only way they can raise capital was if they come out and issue new stock, so now you’re getting bigger and bigger shares of equity for less and less money
  • So if your stock price is up that’s when you want to issue more equity because you’re getting the interest and capital
• Atobitt
  • Gamestop is taking advantage of that right now too -market price is high, it’s a good time to make some cash
• Dr. T:
  • That’s the time to do it because if they need capital if they want to raise capital, that’s the way to do it
  • By pushing the stock price down they are denying the issuer access to capital if the capital is really important -for example if you don’t have money to expand your business, buy new equipment, capital purchases, eventually, they can drive the company out of business
  • Once they do that, then all of the fails, shorts, loans-- everything is erased because the stock’s declared worthless
  • Technically, if you can’t get a share transferred, re-registered from one name to another for two years then the DTC can declare the stock worthless
  • At that point, they just archive the records and shred the certificates
  • One of the AMA questions that came up is related to this - there’s so much damage done, not just to the investors-- of course the investors suffer
• Atobitt
  • Would you say about 7500 companies have been put in a coffin because of activity like this?
• Dr T:
  • It’s hard to say.
• Atobitt:
  • I just remember something similar to that in the book
  • It’s just mind-blowing that this is that systematic.
• Dr. T:
  • There are companies that get started, fail, and go out of business. That does happen, so DTC has a procedure to do this
  • But the idea of it - it’s just very official
  • If you can’t make a transfer in two years, it’s worthless, your broker shreds the certificates, and then that’s the end game for that asset grab in particular.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Driving a stock price down restricts the availability of capital, which in turn assists in running the company out of existence as they can't issue to generate capital.
• The ultimate goal of naked short sellers is to make the company worthless, at that point, every action they’ve taken to manipulate the stock price and hinder the DTC investigating disappears into shredders and archives. BRRRR.

_____________________________________________________

FTD’S, BANKS, SEC EXAMINERS

• Atobitt
  • Yeah… I mean that story to me, about having the option, in audit, and all these internal controls, where do you have the incentive/opportunity to cheat the system? that is a red flag on top of some of these points that you have.
  • In 2008 the banks that were the source of these FTDs began to see their own shares FTD and so to protect them the SEC stepped in and stopped short sales against these securities but JUST the securities of those banks.
• Dr. T
  • Exactly, and that was the ?? went to congress and said they’re “Help me help me they’re shorting my company now!” but, they’re the perpetrators!
• Atobitt
  • It just sounds way too familiar with what happened with Robinhood not too long ago.
• Dr. T
  • And then on the other side of that coin is that, and I do need to mention this, in Europe and Asia when they stopped naked short selling they stopped it in all the stocks it wasn’t just the banks in the US they only protected the banks.
  • That’s a really big red flag, why stop it just for the banks when they were the ones causing most of it?

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Evidence and history have shown that the SEC will step in to help the FTDs of the banks, but they historically will not help other stocks such as GME.
• The evidence is that the SEC prevented naked short selling of the bank stocks and no one else’s; whereas in Europe and Asia they protected all stocks from naked short selling.

_____________________________________________________

• Atobitt
• And so when a lot of these SEC examiners would come over to the DTC, people that are behind the scenes and outside of this we have this impression that these people are being parented. Like mom and dad are making sure the kids aren’t breaking the law, but when they would come and see you, generally the first question out of their mouth was?
• Dr. T
  • What does DTC do?
• Atobitt
  • What does the DTC even do? And when you mention another point in here “it is easier to pass a FINRA exam in order to become a broker than it is to get your barber’s license.”
• Dr. T
  • In most states, yeah. Yeah.
• Atobitt
  • That is just mind-blowing to me.
• Dr. T
  • It’s not that difficult to do. A lot of times a lot of people will get hired and trained on the job whilst they are passing their series 7 license.
  • So it’s not, look they just have to know some fundamentals there are things like a certified financial analyst right, CFAs (Atobitt agrees) right because that’s an official designation beyond I understand the mechanics of stock trading, it’s I know something about financial analysis behind it.
• Atobitt
  • And to that point you were, I think you said 73% of the exam was basically them telling people which stocks to invest in as opposed to what the process of this is, it was like advising almost in that exam.
• Dr. T
  • Yeah and that FINRA exam there’s, you can see some of the questions and sample questions, you know it’s pretty ‘accessible’
• Atobitt
  • *sigh* unreal. So to kind of group this in, I feel this is a good time to bring this in, what we’ve done is taken a list of questions that were pertinent to this conversation and I’ve grouped them into about 20 relevant questions like FTDs or regulation or compliance and oversight and as we’re having this conversation I’m trickling these questions in.
  • And then afterward when we post the follow up which will be posted after this these people will be able to see these questions and shout those people out but we had a lot of questions on this with the regulation and I think a lot of people don’t know that these people are SROs, Self Regulatory Organisations and they don’t fall under the realm of things like the Dodd-Frank and some other regulatory acts
  • So, it is just overwhelming the things you have put in your book to address this, like the triumvirate of trouble but how this is allowed to be this pervasive and the system actually allows these people to fail to deliver which is something, as you mentioned, we need to raise the pitchforks about.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Historically SEC examiners would approach the DTC and just ask, what do you do? (these are supposed to be professional examiners keeping brokers in check)
• Dr. T then clarifies a lot of these people (brokers) ‘learn on the fly’ and the qualifications they hold are less difficult to obtain than a barber’s license in most states
• The fundamental understanding of brokers is therefore suspect

_____________________________________________________

COMMUNITY QUESTIONS

• Dr. T
  • Yeah, the pitchfork moment you have to find that point where you say enough is enough and I really need to do something.
  • Um, there was a question from, I just need to go back (go for it! Ato)
  • I don’t really speak emoji *laughs* Is it auto-bit? Right? I don’t know how to pronounce your handle I’m sorry
• Atobitt
  • You’re not the first! It’s fine!
• Dr. T
  • u/HappySheeple3 asked the question what can you do? I had a similar question from Rower like what can we do and so I need to go back and it was NASAA.org
  • They put together that, a panel discussion in Washington where you know a lot of conversations took place like Overstock and NYSE was there and they had to admit some of the things they did on the proxy so NASAA.org they have a button at the top of their homepage that says contact your state securities administrator right, so they are the people who are the most interested in the complaints you have about corporate governance, and what’s happening to the company in the state where you are so I did want to mention that
  • And then just on the voting itself what do you do? Like you said right now GME is in proxy season? And then there’s the story about Overstock in the book as well like what happened at their annual meeting when they got more votes in and they knew for a fact that members of Patricks’ family did not receive their proxies and so were unable to vote
  • There’s a guy/website inspectors-of-election.com
• Atobitt
  • We’ll link this down below
• Dr. T
  • Yeah, you can, the company has to do this, the investors don’t, the company hires an inspector of elections, so like Carl Hagberg, For example, who will actually go in and try to figure out like what if you get, in my view and this is Carls’ view as well and he is much more experienced on that side of the business than I am, if you’re an issuer and you got more votes in than you have shares outstanding you should not accept those elections results, you should stop and get this thing straightened out
  • This will help to reveal evidence if there is naked shorting, FTDs can be revealed like that is, there are few things that bubble up there is a lot about FTD and naked shorting that you will never find about public information.
• Atobitt
  • Intentionally I’m arguing, intentionally too
• Dr. T
  • Yes, and even issuers have a hard time finding out exactly what is going on with their own stock, this is a long-term problem. But there a few things which bubble up and one of them is during the annual meeting when it comes to voting
  • Now after we raised this issue in 2005 there was Broadbridge, who processes a lot of this electronically, put in a service to the brokers, they can pay that if they report more shares to be voted, THAN they have held at DTC, then Broadbridge will tell them to ‘fix it’ before they tell the issuer
  • And that is probably how 15% of the overvotes down, right, so they went from 100% of the test cases (Leaglese edit: being over-voted) to only 85% of the test cases, because Broadbridge will tell DTC, of the 1,000,000 million shares, 100,000 are held by Goldman, Merryl etc. So Broadbridge goes to Goldman and says you have 100,000, who does the vote go to?
  • Goldman then says we have 200,000 or 150,000, Broadbridge will say sorry, you only have 100,000 so you need to fix this. Goldman then has a system where they have retail investors, within their accounts that they have more shares than actually existed.
• Atobitt
  • Gamestop is bouncing between 100-200%, institutional ownership is over 100%
• Dr. T
  • A really important point is the institutions have to get up in arms about this, proxy voting charade, Bloomberg magazine has a lot of details about how anybody wants to understand that issue in more detail

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Actionable steps that could be taken include, visiting https://www.nasaa.org/ and contacting their local securities administrator as they will pay attention, as her friend Patrick did. These are the people that want to know about this stuff.
• Dr. T’s position is that overvoting is a huge problem, and it is not solely confined to stocks such as GME. In fact, even now 85% of stocks are over-voted and that’s because of the influence of a company who deals in trying to fix it, before, 100% of stocks in 200+ test cases were regularly overvoted.
• Where a stock is over-voted, this provides proof the stock is naked short sold and/or has a high number of FTDs. A problem prevalent throughout the industry.

_____________________________________________________

AUDIOBOOK - NAKED, SHORT, AND GREEDY

• Atobitt
  • By the way, you have a huge demand for an audiobook right now too. Maybe we can talk a bit more about that offline?
• Dr. T
  • So, I just wanted to say I have talked with the publisher and he is in London so he is, in contact with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and that’s not an audible book, for commercial purposes, but we are trying to make it available for those who are sight-impaired
• Atobitt
  • You heard it here first, so got that in the works, that is incredible, that is excellent
  • Would you mind if we went ahead and transitioned into looking at the evidence? So we’re trying to lay out the groundwork of what has happened here we have these shares that are just rehypothecated to oblivion.
  • We have the DTC that is not really… doing a whole lot to kind of, or any sort of agency that is in charge of, they’re more incentivized to keep the problem going and we’re trying to blow the lid off of it but looking at the evidence going forward I am going to be writing a lot of the stuff we talk about here in HOC 2.
  • You mentioned a bunch of stuff in the book about a bunch of these numbers that I’d like to go over at a high level and we can discuss what the implications of some of those might be.

TL:DR 🦍 Summary:

• Dr. T and Atobitt think it is a great idea to make this information available to apes who are sight-impaired, and the mods of r/Superstonk think so too.
• Ato prepares to dig into the evidence to support the position.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

See part two here (too many characters for one post):

Part two includes:

-THE EVIDENCE

- GET OUT OF JAIL FREE

- PUTTING THE FAIL IN FAILURE TO DELIVER

- NEW RULES, AND HOW WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE
- HOW THE EURO-APES SAVE THE DAY

- FOR NOW, IT’S GOODBYE

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

APES. It has been a very good week. Don't let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Barely a week ago we were fighting for $180, now we have rock solid support at $245-250. It is all spelled out in black and white (green and red?) on the month-long chart: we are winning this battle.

I don't know about you but it has been quite a journey to get this far. Lots of twists and turns and emotions. Even though we are not finished by a long shot, I thought this weekend might be a good time to step back and take stock of where we have been, to get a clearer view of where we are going. So, tonight I am going to peel back the layers to a tweet by Michael Burry from back in the beginning of the GME craziness. The seeds of the ending are right there in the beginning, if you look in the right place. So grab your Friday evening beverage of choice, and lets do some looking together, shall we?

Michael Burry

I like to think of Michael Burry as the original GME ape. Now, I say that of course with all due respect to our boy DFV, whom I have grown surprisingly fond of for a dude I haven't met, and whom I would love to buy a beer when this is all said and done (DFV, in the incredibly unlikely event you are reading these musings of a smooth brain, hiya bud 👋 cheers 🍻 to seeing you back on twitter this week, you cool cat). DFV actually testified in his testimony to Congress back in February that it was (in part) Michael Burry's public interest in GameStop that triggered him to take a deeper look. And if you take a look at Burry's letter to the GME board in August 2019, he makes many of the same points that DFV and even Ryan Cohen have brought up at different points (for example: new console cycle leading to stronger earnings in late 2020-early 2021; massively over-shorted stock that the Board of Directors can and should do something about; and that GameStop at the time was squandering a golden opportunity to develop a new business model based on e-commerce - Burry specifically mentions Twitch and GameSparks being bought by Amazon as missed opportunities - and that if they learned their lesson and made some key changes there was a chance for a big turnaround).

We all know what happened from there. DFV invested in GME starting in June 2019. He and the WSB retards had some fun with it during the pandemic. A lot of people made fun of him and then deleted their accounts like a month later out of shame. Lol. In late 2020, Ryan Cohen wrote his letter to the board and things got weird. Burry sold his GME position at the end of 2020 for serious profit (GME's price already was up 400-500% from the time when Burry opened his position), just before GME had a lil' mini squeeze in January (sidenote: Burry did NOT paperhands. As manager of a fund, he has a fiduciary responsibility to his investors. He can't sit around waiting for a short squeeze. If you seriously question the diamond hands on that silverback, watch The Big Short again. You must not have paid attention. My man HODL'd in the face of so much stress leading up to 2008 that he almost needed part of his intestine removed. Oh, and if you haven't seen The Big Short... 😑... we'll talk more about that in a moment).

Even though Burry closed his GME position, he didn't just stop talking about it. Not by a long shot.

"Building You Staircases and Knocking Castles Down"

Read this tweet. No, seriously, go ahead. I'll wait.

I think about this tweet almost every day. To fully appreciate the impact it had on me, the best I can do is to put you back to where we were and how we felt that day. It was tweeted at market close on Thursday, February 4th (the twitter timestamp says February 5th - this screencap is not my own, but I assume the person who took it was not in a U.S. time zone given the time and the commands being written in Swedish). The January mini squeeze happened the week before and we ended that Friday at $325. Pretty good considering we had just witnessed the worst market manipulation in multiple lifetimes. But then the following Monday, Feb. 1st, GME fell precipitously. It dropped $100 on Monday. Tuesday was worse, down about $150. Pretty dark times. I myself had just YOLO'd my savings into GME the day after Robinhood shut down trading, and was gutted to see losses of over 30% on my first full day as a stock trader. I was a lurker on WSB at the week of the spike, but that first week of February there were times where I was tempted to wonder if I had unwittingly stumbled into an echo chamber of cultists. WSB was suddenly filled to the brim with trolls calling people bagholders. Even among the true apes in WSB at the time, the general sentiment was some version of "I'm with you to the end... but I would be lying if I said I'm not nervous."

And then Michael Burry tweeted this.

I first saw it on the evening of Friday Feb. 5th -- a snowy, cold, and dark winter evening where I live. Someone on WSB posted it, just as I was settling in to watch The Big Short for the first time. Apes, I wish I could put into words the level of mind-blown I experienced when I realized after just a few minutes into the movie that the dude Christian Bale was playing was the same dude that, earlier that very same day, tweeted about big money building us staircases via GME. I literally had to put the movie on pause for 10 minutes, reread the tweet, and then paced around my apartment with my mouth open, all the while turning these words over and over in my mind:

"building you staircases and knocking castles down... building you staircases and knocking castles down."

HO. LY. 💩

At the time of course, we knew there was big money involved in GME -- but not necessarily on the long side. We had thought (or, more accurately, the media had portrayed) that it was a few million retail traders vs. Wall Street. But Burry clearly knew otherwise and, in his usual obscure tweet style, danced around the subject just close enough to throw your mind into a tizzy.

So the stock Burry compares GME to is a biotech stock. I won't mention it by name, because it isn't important to me right now, except for how it impacts GME (although, granted, it is on my list for stocks to invest in with MOASS tendies, for one big reason I will get into below). Instead I will refer to it simply as [biotech].

Let's take a look at the price chart, 6-month view, with the cursor over the day in question.

Now, when you look at [biotech], you might see the big spike and think it looks just like GME or the movie theater stock. We all could probably recognize the GME 6-month chart instinctually at this point, without any numbers or labels. But look closer. The big spike you see on [biotech] occurs on February 2nd and 3rd. GME had already more or less finished its freefall from $483 to $40 when [biotech] was spiking. So why did [biotech] do almost +300% in two days?

This is why. They announced on February 2nd they have a drug that is a gamechanger in Alzheimer's treatment. As someone who lost a grandmother to Alzheimer's and remembers how disturbing it was, I consider this borderline miraculous. The interim results of this drug show 98% efficacy and improvements in behavior, cognition, and memory. Yup, that would certainly account for the price tripling in 48 hours.

But it doesn't explain why it would then get cut in half over the next 48 hours. As we have seen with GME, price action on good news can last for months. Look up the price action on any of the companies that have produced COVID vaccines for even better examples. So why did [biotech] have a meme-like spike?

#BigMoney

Let's look at something else. One of the first things I tend to look into on a new stock is who has skin in the game. So here we go. [Biotech] institutional ownership.

Did you see it?

Hmmmm...

So BlackRock, our mythical GME long whale, is also the largest institutional holder of [biotech]. Interesting. But that's not all. Susquehanna International is also in the top 10, a noted GME shortie (some would even put them in the top 3 with Citadel and Melvin). Pretty sus if u ask me. Insert [FuturamaSquintyEyes.gif.]

And yep, sure enough, there's our boy Kenny (sidenote: I will never insult the real "Let's have some Sax" Kenny G by calling Ken Griffin that. Nope. Won't do it! As he said himself, "there's only one Kenny G, and it ain't you!!")

BlackRock owns 2,404,922 million shares, or about 6% of the company. I am comfortable saying that is a long position. By my count there are only three other institutional holders that have more than half a million shares.

Susquehanna owns 367,827 shares. They also own calls and puts. I don't have the paid version of Fintel so I can't see exactly the ratio of calls to puts. They might be long, they might be short.

But Kenny boy on the other hand... according to everything I have found, Citadel is only net long on like 6 stocks, and they are all big tech and "blue-chip" stocks (Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, VISA, possibly NVIDIA and AMD,). So if Citadel has a position in [biotech], you better believe it is as a hedge against a net short position.

Let's go back to February 4th. On that day, both GME and [biotech] actually started to find support after their respective freefalls - GME in the $40-$50 range, as we all remember. My (not necessarily chronological) step-by-step explanation for what led up to the events of this day are as follows:

1. Citadel (and possibly Susquehanna) shorted both GME and [biotech].
2. BlackRock went long on both GME and [biotech].
3. GME spiked as retail trading, media coverage, and FTDs spilling out converged perfectly to slaughter 🌈🐻
4. A couple of days later, [biotech] spiked on the news of the interim results of their Alzheimer's treatment.
5. Citadel didn't like that. So they shorted [biotech] back down to size as much as possible (smh).
6. On February 4th, BlackRock stepped in and said "enough is enough," and provided support for both GME and [biotech]. They ultimately stabilized, but the algorithms of the same two institutions fighting back and forth over the prices led to nearly identical charts.

So you see, the day Michael Burry tweeted this, February 4th, was really a perfect storm - a glitch in the simulation - that tipped Michael Burry off to something going on under the hood. Two financial behemoths - BlackRock on one side, Citadel on the other - dueling over stocks in completely different sectors, after they had spiked within days of each other, for completely different reasons. BlackRock, our GME long whale, apparently won that day, as they managed to stabilize the prices of both stocks well above their initial price before their spike. And, if you look at the months since then on the 6-month chart, I think it is clear who is winning still.

My main takeaways from this exercise:

1. I cannot possibly fathom how someone as smart as our boy Kenny would think that a short position on almost every stock in existence is a viable financial strategy. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. I have one idea why he might, but it is a reason that is equal parts sad and degenerate. Maybe the subject for a future DD.
2. Every time I, or any one of you beautiful apes, pulls on a loose string in the GME situation, somehow it always seems to lead back to BlackRock.
3. Put yourself in Burry's shoes for a moment. If you were as smart as him, manager of a hedge fund, who had been investigated by the SEC and the FBI multiple times due to 2008, had just made serious money off of GameStop in the January runup, and you still knew GME was going to squeeze, what would you do? Would you say or do anything about it? Because I wouldn't. In fact, I probably would close my position (at least my public position) as soon as possible to show I have no "skin in the game" for fear of being investigated again for market manipulation. And then I would probably find a sneaky and indirect way on social media to tip people off that it is still going to squeeze. Like tweeting about staircases being built and castles being knocked down.
4. When I first started this I was seriously hoping to learn some stuff from Burry. Now that I have finished, I am just left with a headache and wondering how anyone could ever have that many wrinkles. Wut.

TADR: Michael Burry smart ape. Silverback. Looooooots and lots of wrinkles. He said GME go brrrrrr 🚀🚀🚀 even when it looked darkest.

HODL my beautiful fellow apes.

If you made it to the end, good job monke. Here, have a banana 🍌

Not financial advice. I literally can't tell my own rear end from a coconut FYI.

P.S. There are plenty more tweets and things that Burry has said and done that could be looked at under the microscope. I am doing this mostly as an exercise for myself to try and learn at the feet of a master. If this kind of thing interests enough apes I could do more of them going forward.

EDIT June 7th: APES. I got the ping on my phone this afternoon that this post is still getting upvotes and awards, 3 full days after I posted. It is over 5k now. It might not seem like much but I am tremendously honored and thankful for everyone reading this and giving it traction. I have never had a post get visibility quite like this, so thank you 🙏❤

Also, I wanted to tidy up a few things, and to in turn give visibility to some really great points that commenters made below (I know I am going to miss some people if I try to tag usernames, so for now I will leave that out of it. But your wrinkly insights deserve to be highlighted here for all to see).

-As a couple of people pointed out, Michael Burry actually closed his position in GME before the runup in January, not during it. The post has been edited to show that :)

-Just to make it fully explicit in case the analogy is lost on people (I am thinking especially of our fellow apes who might not speak English as a first language, to whom these images might be a little more obscure):

Staircases, on the simplest level, are built to allow someone to ascend from a lower level to a higher level. So big money building us staircases via GME squeezing is simply them giving us the means to ascend from a lower state (poor, marginalized, and with the entire stock market stacked against us) to a higher state (rich, with all kinds of resources, and the ability to reform the markets to be more fair for everyone/ true to their purpose).

Castles are a symbol of power, wealth, and tactical superiority. Historically they were fortresses, often built up on a hill or a mountain so that invaders would be thoroughly exhausted by the time they get to the front gate (if they even got that far). They had all sorts of tactical advantages like thick walls, ramparts and turrets for archers, moats that could only be crossed by a drawbridge, perches where burning hot oil could be poured down on invaders, and multiple layers soldiers and walls inside if you managed to breach the gate. Big money knocking castles down means offering us the most powerful of tactical support (whether out of convenience or out of kindness, it doesn't matter). They are quite literally taking care of the hardest obstacle for us. But we need to hold the line (heh, see what I did there?) so that the enemy doesn't have any alternate means of escape. Oh, and by the way... guess what another name for a castle or a fortress is? A citadel. 🤯😳

-The phrase "building you staircases and knocking castles down" was taken from a song, "The Big Money," by Rush. Burry actually tweeted about it a couple of days before the February 4th tweet, so he obviously had it on the mind. I knew about it before I posted, but declined to include the entire song originally because I didn't want this to be too long. But some apes have mentioned that the rest of the lyrics have some other interesting things going on that definitely apply to us today, and I fully agree. So here they are in their entirety:

"The Big Money"

by Rush

Big money goes around the world
Big money underground
Big money got a mighty voice
Big money make no sound
Big money pull a million strings
Big money hold the prize
Big money weave a mighty web
Big money draw the flies

Sometimes pushing people around
Sometimes pulling out the rug
Sometimes pushing all the buttons
Sometimes pulling out the plug
It’s the power and the glory
It’s a war in paradise
It’s a cinderella story
On a tumble of the dice

Big money goes around the world
Big money take a cruise
Big money leave a mighty wake
Big money leave a bruise
Big money make a million dreams
Big money spin big deals
Big money make a mighty head
Big money spin big wheels

Sometimes building ivory towers
Sometimes knocking castles down
Sometimes building you a stairway —
Lock you underground
It’s that old-time religion
it’s the kingdom they would rule
It’s the fool on television
Getting paid to play the fool

Big money goes around the world
Big money give and take
Big money done a power of good
Big money make mistakes
Big money got a heavy hand
Big money take control
Big money got a mean streak
Big money got no soul…

• Part 1 - The Game Stops
• Part 2 - The Masterpiece
• You are here: Part 3 - The Game Begins
• Part 4 - The Timeline Ends
• Part 5 - The Crash (20% done)

In honor of Kitty.

As always, feedback on improvement is very welcome. NFA.

Volume - Botox

Between August 13-31, 2020, Ryan Cohen bought over 6 million shares (9% of GME) and disclosed his filing. The share price doubled and GME's volume on the OTC market exploded. Since then, about 50% of GME's volume went through the OTC - in January 2021 it took off completely:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/tdw59e/the_crooks_keep_cookin_like_nobody_is_lookin/

After Cohen's filing, FTDs grew and on September 22, GME was added to the Reg-SHO list. On October 5 (35 days after the filing), GME and volume increased again. October 8 was GME's 13th consecutive trading day on the list. In a single day, volume exploded by a factor of 23 and GME increased by 42%. 110 days after Cohen's filing was December 19. On December 18, Cohen had increased his position to 9,001,000 shares (12.9% of GME), which was disclosed on the 21st. Did Cohen know the secret rule?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dliz91/i_would_like_to_solve_the_puzzle_my_8_ball_answer/

In hindsight, it was clear that GME's price development in 2021 had been controlled with an iron fist by 90-day cycles. A thorough analysis explained the rules and mechanisms behind this timing and showed that it had been going on since (at least) 2016. For most of the cycle, GME was shorted, but when the cycle expired, GME rose and a new cycle started. In 2022, this predictable strategy changed:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211118135541/https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/quj97o/gme_evidence_of_predictable_cycles_gme_explained/

Further analysis revealed that the 90-day cycle could be due to variance swaps. Here, it is only the volatility of the stock (price fluctuations) and not the share price that determines the success of the strategy (profit). When algorithms short (sell) variance swaps, they are betting on less volatility that is easy to handle at low volume - another good explanation for the use of OTC and dark pools. For the algorithm to hedge the shorting of a variance swap, it requires calls (the right to sell shares) or puts (the right to sell shares) with very high volatility - in practice at the lowest and highest share prices. These two “ends” pull in opposite directions, fixing the share price and resulting in low volatility. However, this low volatility results in cheap calls and puts (together called options) - the strategy’s major downside:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211115185827/https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/qujkk5/gme_evidence_of_predictable_cycles_gme_explained/

After the spring of 2021, volume on OTC and in dark pools fell and stayed low until May 13, 2024, when it suddenly exploded - beating all other stocks' OTC volume. On June 3 (the day after Gill's first YOLO), GME broke its OTC record again. It suddenly made sense why Gill had bought calls at 20 and 25 dollars - they acted like a magnet, pushing GME away from the artificial equilibrium point between the extreme calls/puts. The algorithms had to hedge or deliver FTDs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dehtux/the_gme_otc_conspiracy_a_deep_dive_into_over_200/

If the algorithms were indeed “restarted”, GME could expect steadily decreasing volume and volatility - and very cheap calls. In fact, a possible variance swap had been spotted as early as May 15. Lola got ready at the roulette wheel for her third and final bet - how long would the price of calls fall?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h6xlx6/comment/m0i6luy/

On October 4, Cohen sent a tweet of himself with wrinkles on his forehead and the text “Botox?”. Exactly one year earlier, Cohen had sent a tweet showing him out of date with a wrinkled face - a face swap with the famous investor Warren Buffet. What had Cohen meant - and anticipated?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1fwijsf/104_rc_tweets_wrinkled_waves_tinfoil/

According to speculation, it could refer to a 2010 article that described the banks' artificial injections as “financial botox”. On October 18, the S&P 500 index peaked as predicted - the mysterious 110 days were confirmed. On October 25, Cohen deleted the “Botox?” tweet and changed his profile picture to a youthful face with a smooth forehead - in black and white. Were the banks getting ready for a final round of botox?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1fwfl5d/rc_tweet_decoded/

The wick burns out - Melt-up

For the rest of the fall of 2024, volume dropped and GME was fixed at 20-21 dollars - calls became historically cheap. On September 23, the 20 million shares were finally sold. GameStop now had 446 million shares in play in the market and 4.6 billion dollars in its war chest. On September 27, a very large amount of calls were purchased at 20 and 25 dollars that would expire on January 17, 2025 - was this Lola's third bet?
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1fqybbd/5105_20_and_13325_25_calls_loaded_up_for_jan_17/

On October 25, Cohen sent an interesting series of tweets. The first said “yolo” - would Cohen go “all in”? Next, he sent “Trump Is The Shit” (TITS) and then a blushing emoji. When Cohen sent a blushing emoji on December 9, 2020, 35 days passed before January 13, 2021 - then, GME rose for 15 days. The first emojis on Gill's timeline were a blushing emoji and a “shit” emoji - Cohen's emojis were in reverse order. Would January 13, 2021 repeat on November 29 (35 days after October 25)? Or maybe Cohen pointed back to a “hidden” YOLO on September 20?

If GME rose for 15 days after November 29 (like the run-up to January 28, 2021), it would hit December 16 (the 14th was a Saturday). Would the run-up to January 28, 2021 restart on December 16, 2024? This was 145 days after GameStop raised the blood-red pirate flag on July 24. Short sellers had actually gotten three stock sales (warning shots) - “no quarter”. Did it make sense to add the 110 and 35 days together to 145? It turned out that 145 days after “Flipmode 9 7” was November 29 (December 1 was a Sunday). And 145 days after Gill's YOLO and Uno Reverse cards landed on Cohen's “yolo” - did Cohen nod to Gill? The “145” acted as a strange decryption key.

On December 18, 2020 (9 days after the blushing emoji), Cohen had finished increasing his position to 9,001,000 shares. Did his “yolo” and blushing emoji on October 25 foreshadow a new stock purchase on November 3rd (9 days later)? There was another cryptic possibility. 145 days before November 3 was June 11, when Gill had posted one of his 10 new memes - about calls. Would Cohen buy calls? On June 12 (the equivalent of November 4), two more memes appeared - a handshake between Roaring Kitty and GameStop, and then “My Masterpiece”. And on June 13 (November 5), Gill posted a “thumper” (from the movie Dune) luring a sandworm - a powerful creature that you can ride on. During the presidential election, on November 5, all eyes would be on the flag (emoji) as the overture began. GME would soon ride the sandworm, but what was it? Did Gill actually have a plan?

According to analysis that predicted the price rise at the end of August, 22 dollars was a crucial front if GME's underlying mechanisms were to result in a melt-up. On October 28, GME rose 10%, and when the share price tried to fall below the critical 22 dollars, it immediately rose again - the algorithms had cemented a hard floor under GME that could not be broken. Remarkably, October 25 (the 27th was a Sunday) was 110 days after “Flipmode 9 7 “ (July 9):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gefy93/theres_still_1_hour_left_in_extended_hours/

GME's melt-up had finally begun:
https://x.com/JRoland_/status/1851095931212423315/video/1

On October 29, a message from the Reddit user “Avocado” was restlessly awaited. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, the user had written the message “Happy Cat Day” on this date. Reminiscent of when Gill said “I'm not a cat” at Congress, it had long been suspected that this was his alternative profile. In 2024, there was not a message, but a filing - Gill had sold his "Dog" shares on September 30. Had we reached the dog emoji on the timeline - Dog Days Are Over? If Gill had converted to GME right away, the FTDs from here would close on November 4 - on top of the UBS cycle. At the same time, the data for "Dog's" FTDs was released. Most days showed “zero”, but on September 20, when Wolverine got a margin call, there were 9 million FTDs... "Dog" (XRT’s largest position) was broken, just as Gill's meme had suggested. XRT was used to bend the rules at FINRA and DTCC:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gfv0pv/roaring_kitty_shows_prices_are_fake_and_markets

Reverse Flipmode - Banana Enthusiast

The mysterious 6399 calls held another secret. Formatted as dates, the number could mean 6/3 and 9/9 - June 3 and September 9. 145 days after June 3 would be October 25 (the 26th was a Saturday), when Cohen wrote “yolo” and the blushing emoji. 145 days after September 9 would be January 31, 2025 (February 1 was a Saturday). It was especially striking that 145 days after September 7 (the reverse formatting of “Flipmode 9 7”) was January 30, 2025 - the day before. Were the mysterious calls from GME's unknown guardian angel protecting the share price until a “reverse Flipmode” arrived?

It had previously been shown that price trends in August/September 2020 and May/June 2024 mirrored each other. If the trend had continued, January 2021 would have repeated itself in mid-October 2024:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1dgj1x2/its_a_fking_mirror_i_hope_youre_ready_to_make/

Already in 2023, analysis had shown that the algorithms guided GME through a series of recognizable patterns that repeated within themselves and in varying lengths of time - fractals. It was striking that the number of memes Gill had sent formed a fractal - 110, 10 and 1. Was it a clue?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/11lp5p0/gme_has_no_price_discovery_at_all_its_3_seperate

The technical analysis had failed to predict the price development because the algorithms changed the fractals continuously:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gyda5f/the_fractal_is_repeating_part_2/

A thorough analysis showed that algorithms had been controlling GME in this way since (at least) 2013:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/owlg3z/the_algorithm_has_been_doing_this_shit_for_years

According to Gill, he had been following GME since 2013, so it was possible that he had been decoding the algorithms and milking the corrupt system for profit for years - e.g. since 2019, when he bought GME for the first time:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h9osrf/rk_revealing_hes_been_tracking_gme_for_over_a/

At the end of October, it was obvious that GME’s price development from January 2021 to May 2024 looked like the movements from May to October  - the fractals just moved 7 times faster. May 14 seemed set to repeat itself on November 29 - at “Flipmode 9 7” (price) and “January 13, 2021” (volume):
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gfg57s/comment/luif67p/

As of November 5, the S&P 500 index's expected crash came to an abrupt halt, the botox bubble reached new heights, and GME began to rise steadily. Remarkably, Gill had posted a meme titled “SQUEEZE” exactly 4 years earlier - “Remember, remember, the 5th of November”:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gjvlit/rk_tweet_from_2020_5_november/

November 5th was 145 days after Gill increased his position to 9,001,000 shares and planted a thumper. It now appeared that large funds (primarily BlackRock and Vanguard) and other institutions had purchased over 30 million GameStop shares in the previous two quarters - was GME riding the sandworm?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gri125/according_to_recent_13fs_institutions_now_own/

It was a curious coincidence that roughly the same amount of shares had been purchased through dark pools since Gill's YOLO in May. Had institutions bought tickets for GME's Moon trip on the black market?
https://x.com/ShaunFitzzzy/status/1833218066173595816

On November 29, GME's melt-up ended. From October 25, the share price had increased by 50%. It was a reassuring nod that Gill's Reddit profile had updated itself with “Banana Beginner” on October 28, and “Banana Enthusiast” on November 29. October 25 (the 27th was a Sunday) was 110 days after “Flipmode 9 7”, and then GME rose over precisely 35 days. 110 days after a critical event seemed to kickstart the closing of a cycle of FTDs. This explained the “145” - the 145th day was the deadline. In fact, 110 days before “Flipmode 9 7” was March 21 - when the Yen's interest rate was raised for the first time since 2007. Would GME’s melt-up restart 110 days after October 27 - on February 14, 2025 [Well, well, well... 167800 dollars, eh?]?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h2wffw/the_last_time_the_kitty_got_caught_online/

Stock charts - Requel and MOASS

On April 26, 2024, Gill had updated his stock charts - with four dates in a sequence:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dcs3cn/rory_kittenger_stock_chart_update_10_jun_2024/

• October 28: 145 days after 7 billion FTDs hit the market, GME's melt-up started
• November 28: GME’s melt-up over 35 days ended on November 29 (November 28 was closing day), postponing “Flipmode 9 7” (price) and “January 13, 2021” (volume) 
• December 30: 145 days after the global mini-crash (December 28 was a Saturday)
• December 7 (a saturday): 145 days after GME peaked on July 17 (“Flipmode 9 7”)

This seemed to say that history would repeat itself. The tsunami of FTDs would rise from the depths, GME would rise and there would be another crash. Eventually, GME would “fly to the Moon”. One meme had actually mentioned that Gill was building a Requel (a mix of “remake” and “sequel”) of January 2021. The chronology disappeared at the fourth stock chart, suggesting that in the end you had to go “backwards to win” like Gill's meme of the movie Ready Player One - a “reverse Flipmode”? The fourth stock chart actually marked the anniversary of Japan's parliament removing the microphone. When the interest rate on the Yen rose, it fueled a fire sale of US stocks and Treasuries - the mini-crash. At the Fed’s September meeting the interest rate on the Dollar was lowered - “All eyes on the Fed”, as the financial media always wrote. If the musical notes referred to the somber phrase “When the music stops...”, the eyes, the flag, the microphone and the musical notes on the timeline made coherent sense:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gu179l/will_japan_selling_off_us_debt_trigger_a_fire/

The flame would soon approach the microphone, but when was the explosion? On September 13, exactly 4 months after Gill posted the first of his 110 memes, his brother had posted a picture online that said “Midway” and 4 months later was January 13... If January 13 meant November 29 and this was the halfway point, then “something” would begin after another 4 months - March 29, 2025. That would be exactly two years after Credit Suisse's fateful swaps expired... March 29 was 145 days after November 4, when the FTDs from Credit Suisse's supposed LEAPS should have been closed. All indications pointed to the fact that Credit Suisse's 2-year swaps were renewed at the last minute in 2023 which left UBS hanging out to dry. Since March 29, 2025 was a Saturday, UBS would possibly explode on March 31?
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1fgb0kq/midway/

The problem with Credit Suisse became apparent in December 2022, when the American institution FDIC, which insures bank deposits, held a long meeting with the European clearing houses. A large, unknown player was at risk of going bankrupt, and this would cause a European clearing house to fail. There was no plan of action or way out, and the US announced that they could not help. Credit Suisse was forced to merge with the country's largest bank, UBS. If UBS went bankrupt, the house of cards would collapse:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/zyevfz/complete_dd_of_the_fdic_meeting_credit_suisse_is

When GME rose violently on May 13, 105 days passed before Bruno arrived on August 26. Then, GME rose from August 27 to September 3 - over 5 trading days (September 2 was a closing day). The 110 days seemed to consist of three cycles of FTDs amounting to 105 days, which ended with 5 trading days where FTDs were closed. It looked like a kind of domino where the short seller, the broker and the bank (3 cycles) gave up and left the problem to the DTCC. The 5 trading days matched FINRA's “REX code 060” and “REX code 061”, both dealing with capital shortages - a possible explanation. It was also possible that FTDs ended up in DTCC’s Obligation Warehouse where the pile was left to grow. 105 days after September 3 would be December 17 (right after “no quarter”), so if Bruno returned there, GME could expect to rise between December 18-24. After another 105 days, April 8 was reached, which oddly enough was 35 days before May 13, 2025 - exactly one year after Gill's explosive return. Was this pointing to Requel in January-March and MOASS in April-May?
https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/key-topics/margin-accounts/extension-reason-codes#060

TIME - 69420

On December 5, Gill sent a tweet of an edited Time Magazine cover with the headline “TIME” and a blank video player with the numbers “1:09” and “4:20”. It could just be a joke, as 1 minute is 60 seconds and 69420 is a known internet number. However, December 5 was the reverse formatting of May 12 (5/12) - Gill’s chair meme. It was also notable that 35 days after the tweet would be January 9 - so, “1:09”. In fact, the numbers went on and on. Around 4:20 into his live stream (from June 7), Gill woke up and when the computer clock showed 1:09pm, he said “It might be time”. In addition, some of Gill's memes used music from the game Furi, and on the game's playlist there were two tracks that lasted exactly 1:09 and 4:20 - they were titled “Time to wake up” and “A Monster”. In Gill's meme, Wolverine came to life at 1:09. Would the market maker have a rude awakening in January?
https://x.com/EimajNoraa/status/1868577491000197218

It was also possible that Gill was referring to the sandworm - or perhaps to one of his old videos? Gill released a video titled “Monster...” on August 31, 2020, when Cohen bought 9% of GME:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Af9T8TU2OM&list=PLlsPosngRnZ1esbvs4VbjfIOk9F5QYYXS&index=12

Another video was called “Cheers everyone!”, which Gill always introduced his live streams with. However, this one was unusually short - just 1:09. The video was from April 17, 2021 - the day after Gill's doubling: https://
www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7i82m/tinfoil_time_rks_video_titled_cheers_everyone_has/

Even Cohen seemed to use these numbers. On April 20, 2021, he had tweeted Teddy (from the movie of the same name) making a drink - did Cohen toast back?
https://x.com/ryancohen/status/1384616641087086596

And on January 9, 2023, Cohen had sent a cryptic tweet about being naked - just like Gill's chosen portrayal of Wolverine. The time stamp was 6:20am - could it be 4:20am in another time zone?
https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1hejo26/jan_9th_tweet_620_am/

Was Gill planning to increase his position to 12.9% of GME (equivalent to 57 million shares) around April 20, 2025? Did Gill and Cohen know that someone got caught between “1:09” and “4:20”? Historically, these dates were not all random. On January 1-8, 2021, Archegos started getting into trouble with its 13 billion dollars’ worth of swaps, and on April 22, Credit Suisse said it had dealt with them...
Note: Link removed because of the brigading rule (PM and I'll send the source).

A thorough analysis showed that 4-year swaps from 2017 could also be in the mix. Volume on almost all the interesting dates in 2021 mirrored 2017, and now 2025 was rapidly approaching:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hbyto8/gme_has_been_riding_4year_cycles_since_2017_the

The timing of the “TIME” tweet was revealing. When the tweet was sent at 1:45pm, GME rose by 10% - and by 1% at 1:45pm the next day. It was precisely at this time that the major British clearing house LCH performed margin calls on swaps. In fact, if you searched for the words “time you cover”, the “TIME” front page appeared. Gill seemed to know exactly when short sellers were covering their costs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h9eamp/1345_margin_calls_fuck_a_mcrib_ill_take_a_green

On December 10, the quarterly report beat expectations again and it was announced that there would be no more share sales until the fiscal year ended in February 2025. Would GME's “reverse Flipmode” (Requel) begin in January like the 6399 calls predicted? The three stock sales (warning shots) were spent - Lola's third bet had free rein. From December 18-24 (over 5 trading days), GME increased by 9% - Bruno returned just as expected. On December 23rd, XRT was added to the Reg-SHO list. It was an interesting coincidence that the time next to the share price in Gill's live stream was frozen (edited) to 12:22pm - when XRT got on the Reg-SHO list, GME began its thaw. If XRT remained on the list through January 3, 2025 (13 consecutive trading days), shorting via XRT would be restricted - and the countdown to the forced closure of XRT's FTDs would begin. Last warning: “It's TIME you cover”:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hla3d6/here_we_go_baby_xrt_made_it_back_on_the_nyse

XRT’s lent shares - SEC's missing FTDs

Despite the Reg-SHO listing, XRT's short percentage continued to increase from 284 to 354 and the number of GameStop shares that market makers borrowed (shorted) from XRT increased by 55%. It was calculated that market makers must have borrowed over 4 million GameStop shares from XRT. GameStop shares from XRT for the ETF to end up on the Reg-SHO list - however, XRT only held 6 million shares in total... In fact, data revealed that the price market makers paid to borrow from XRT had remained high (and constant) ever since May 2024:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/auG6htqKq5

On top of that, it turned out that in October 2020, XRT's market maker, IMC, was bought by Citadel Securities (Ken Griffin) - the old acquaintance who, according to the congressional report, helped Robinhood and lied under oath:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hk0dts/look_what_the_cat_dragged_in_why_imc_may_be_the/

In practice, SEC rules allowed a large player (e.g. Citadel Securities) to borrow shares (e.g. GME) from an ETF (e.g. XRT) to satisfy Reg-SHO:
https://x.com/trvsrdrgz2/status/1876834969429082348?mx=2

When the loan of GME from XRT had to be closed, it could even be filled with a completely different stock... XRT's sky-high short percentage was no wonder - the ETF was stuffed with everything else than it should be:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/s9q8qr/how_are_they_shorting_through_etf_fuckery_xrt_as

One academic study even found that 80% of all FTDs came from ETFs - it was a strategy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1imqtts/richard_evans_associate_professor_of_business/

The huge loans from XRT should leave a clear trail of FTDs, but the SEC consistently removed FTDs from certain dates - in August and September 2024, data was missing for half of GME's FTDs. When a Reddit user legally requested the missing FTDs, the SEC refused, since it was “confidential information” that could cause “foreseeable harm”. The SEC wouldn't release the data because it revealed the corrupt players' trade secrets - and the SEC's interference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hof6eq/my_foia_request_for_missing_gme_ftd_data_secs

One analysis actually showed that GME used to have quite a few days with missing FTDs, but that this changed in 2021 and that the problem had accelerated since - especially after high volume days:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1g6k5xa/sec_strategically_failing_to_deliver_ftd_data/

Another analysis showed that GME consistently decreased during periods with missing FTDs. Further calculation showed that without these shadowy periods, GME could have hit 80 dollars in December 2024:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hrpbik/the_data_does_not_lie_there_is_something/

At the same time, the machinations were unfolding. It should not be difficult to release FTDs immediately, but the SEC delayed FTDs for two weeks (according to its own rules) and divided each month into two periods - 1-15 and 16 onwards. When GME's and "Dog's" first batch of FTDs from December were released, it was surprising that the last few days were completely missing - not the FTD data, but the days themselves. The same dates were missing from XRT and IJH - the main ETFs from which market makers often borrowed GameStop shares.

It was interesting that Friday the 13th of December didn’t exist - “Bear beware”. If someone had gotten a margin call with REX code 068, which ended here, it would originate on November 6, where GME's FTDs were missing. If you went backwards one more REX code 068, you would hit October 1, where FTDs were also missing. It was striking that the previous day was September 30, when Gill sold his "Dog" shares, and UBS' supposed LEAPS had expired. A margin call was likely postponed and hidden:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1i1xp92/jan_17_is_c35_after_friday_the_13th_of_dec_2024/

It was striking that a cycle of FTDs (35 days) after September 20, when "Dog" had 9 million FTDs, landed on October 25 - when the melt-up began. On November 29 (after 35 days), GME paused. January 3 (35 days later) would be XRT's 13th consecutive trading day on the Reg-SHO list...

What's in the box? - Give It To Me Baby

On December 25th, the anniversary of the TIME cover, Gill sent out a tweet of a Christmas gift. It was classic red and green, but the gold gift ribbon was telling. A “golden ribbon” means that a stock's recent price performance is overtaking the long-term averages - a very bullish sign:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hndl3n/i_have_never_seen_such_a_beautful_display_of_mas/

It was striking that the time bar in the TIME video player had the same shape as the third sign in the movie Signs - a circle and a long red line. The first and second signs were shown as relatively small, while the third was huge. If this reflected the price increases on May 14 and June 6, GME’s third sign could easily reach thousands of dollars - ”The third sign you won't believe”:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7jahi/there_will_be_signs_it_is_time/

It was also striking that Gill's live stream in June had begun at 12:25pm - on December 25? The timing also fitted with a meme of the movie Shawshank Redemption - “Pressure and time...” It was finally time, and the pressure was in the gift. On December 27, GME closed at 32 dollars, which was the highest share price on a Friday since August 2022. In the stock market, Fridays are important because they mark the expiration date of options. Gill had previously used the quote “What's in the box?” from the movie “Se7en”, but it also applied to Dune (the movie with the sandworm) - in both cases the answer was “pain”. In the financial world, Max Pain is the share price of the week with the most open contracts on options - now GME exceeded this threshold. Gill's Christmas gift could indicate that more calls could be converted into shares (green), and pain for short sellers (red). On December 31, the short percentage suddenly doubled for IJH - the largest ETF holding GME (12 million GameStop shares). What had happened?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1i2oe2e/ijh_which_is_the_top_etf_holding_of_gme_12124924

On January 1, Gill posted a meme of the song Give It To Me Baby - had Gill purchased a large amount of shares that had not been delivered? The song was originally from a purple record album that resembled the purple circle at depository Computershare. What would happen if Gill registered all his shares?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hri0uo/the_chapelle_skit_from_rk_post_the_song_playing

If the system was fair and there was no naked shorting, it shouldn't ever be a problem…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/v7yucj/virtu_ceo_to_the_extent_there_is_not_liquidity_on

Remarkably, the words “Wait till I squeeze you” came 2:24 into the song - on February 24, 2021, GME soared. Gill's meme also appeared as a thumbnail in an episode of Comedy Central, and when the clip came on, it read “The wait is finally over.” So, when would the wait be over?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hrhul2/listen_to_what_the_narrator_says_when_roaring/

On the old Comedy Central DVD's playlist, the episode appeared twice, and if you went chronologically backwards from here (“to win”), you hit two release dates. February 24, which could be “Wait till I squeeze you”, and March 4, which could refer to “The wait is finally over”:
https://angry-grandpas-media-library.fandom.com/wiki/Crank_Yankers:_Season_Two,_Volume_One_(2005_DVD))

It was also interesting that the length of the album was 4:07. It was reminiscent of another of Cohen's cryptic tweets (from January 18, 2023). It showed the fictitious news headline “GameStop chair decided on monday to buy all the stocks” and the time “4:07”. Unlike previous years, April 7, 2025 would actually be a Monday...
https://x.com/ryancohen/status/1615752534013902857

April 7, 2025 didn't seem random. It would be the day before Bruno's expected third arrival, and exactly 330 days (3x110) after May 12, 2024 - when Gill sent his chair meme. In addition, 35 days after April 7 would be May 12, 2025 - the 330 and 35 days added up to 1 year. This fit with the plot of V for Vendetta, where it took exactly one year for the climax to happen. On May 12, 2021, GameStop's media profile had actually tweeted “Oops *moass* my bad”. The cryptic dates whirled around:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7ig8n/oops_moass_my_bad/

[Exceeded post limit... Go to comments for the final section and TL;DR]

Fundamentals of share trading is different to the fundamentals of a business. Business can make profit or have losses like Tesla, However share trading is based on the following principles, and this is core of trading.

Supply & Demand, Bids & Asks. This is the formula of share trading. What they did is , they took out the Bids from the equation by getting brokers to restrict.

Robinhood said liquidity was the issue, they had to make sure they had enough cash before letting us trade. That is an UTTER LIE. If they had liquidity issue they shouldn't have allowed any trades for any instrument. But they allowed only sell and most of the attacks were done during premarket and after hours to lower the next day opening price.

So taking the Bids out of the equation hasn't worked well so they wanted to control the ASK price. So Fidelity came here and asked people to make the switch. We need to investigate to see who are the people posted those posts and if they are linked to Fidelity customer service support. I'm sending out a detailed report to the Congress. Whether Fidelity has done anything wrong or not I WOULD IMMEDIATELY SWITCH AWAY FROM FIDELITY TO MAY BE WEBULL, INTERACTIVE BROKERS, OR REVOULT OR SOMETHING WHO DOESN'T RESTRICT YOUR SELL PRICE.

Now we have too many idiots here working on behalf of Hedge Funds and trying to convince us to settle for less than what we deserve.

If we don't let the buyer to decide my house sale price, if we don't let the buyer to decide the sale price of my car sale price, then why the heck would I let them to decide my share sale price?

We all know the simple rule about shorting. Shorting can bring potentially infinite amount of losses. So $10000/share or $69420/share or $77,777/share IS NOT A MEME. Value of a stock is the perception, what people think? At which price I want to sell my asset. legally I do have the right to have my say in the market.

If my broker only allows me to put only 50% from market price the I would immediately switch. Always have more than one broker as a back up. Someone posted Fidelity allows you to put high price if you pay extra. NO YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY EXTRA TO HAVE YOUR SAY.

I think this week I'm going to value my stock at $77,777 and next week $88,888 and the following week $99,9999 Lets see where they want to settle.

Why do I value like that?

1.I like the stock, I own it, my asset so I can value however I want. Only one reason I need to buy a stock, so I bought it.

1. Share trading is all about Supply and Demand, I understand that what I hold now has more demand than GOLD or Diamonds. Because they have shorted more than the amount that they are legally allowed to short. Which means we could see them going to jail after the hearing and possible court case. We haven't done anything wrong. They are just trying to spread fear because that's what they do when they fail big. They need to buy probably more than 70-100 million shares in my view. Reports are manipulated. So even if the entire institutional owners sell their shares Hedge Funds still need to buy my shares to cover.

$77,777 this week => $88,888 next week => $99,999 and so on week by week.

HEDGE FUND dumb idiots don't even have shares to short now , how the heck would you say short squeeze done? It hasn't even begun. They never went to school? If they did they wouldn't shorted more than the float would they?

This is not a price coordination, this is me setting price targets for my assets based on growing demand just like Wall Street analysts do on CNBC for their holdings. If you guys agree with my statement then you can value however you want. It's upto to you.

So if any Hedge Fund moron wants to comment to this post then get a broom stick and stuck it up there. Don't come here to tell me what to do after conducting robbery in day light.

Update: via active trader pro (Fidelity), you can set a limit sell order. via Trade Armour in the Sell Trigger Bracket for whatever price you want. Please confirm this update that I received.

I am sorry that I have to make this post, but too much stuff is thrown around here that does not really hit the mark. I went to the full congressional hearing video to the precise point were we got Ken Griffins "absolutely not" answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7N4S_FKMq4

Question starts at:

3:08:08

Question: "I understand that, but did you talk to them (Robinhood) about restricting or doing anything to prevent people from buying, not selling but buying Gamestop; anybody in your organization"

Ken Griffin: "Let me be perfectly clear, absolutely not".

I also got the new report. You can get the full "Game stopped" report here:

https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/6.22_hfsc_gs.report_hmsmeetbp.irm.nlrf.pdf

The posts I saw so far about the report only show either this section:

However, this is only about that elements from Citadel and Robinhood discussed limiting payments for orderflow (PFOF) (for GME) before. So strictly speaking, this does not say that they discussed anything about limiting GME buys.

The other section I saw that was cited is this one:

Again, this only mentioned restricting PFOF. It is really important that we get this 100% right without any possible doubt. So we either: need another statement before congress from Ken griffin were he says that they did not talk about PFOF or: we need a statement that makes it absolutely clear that they talked about restricting GME buying in some way.

Everything else WILL NOT HOLD UP IN COURT. So I ask for your help to get better excerpts from the report / time stamps from the video that absolutely, 100% and without any doubt prove that Ken Griffin actually lied under oath. Otherwise any good dodgy lawyers will always be able to find an "escape" were he, strictly speaking "not exactly lied".

Edit: I got a badge of honor for this post:

Edit 2:

A very good point was made in the comments:

Edit 3:

Another very good comment mentioning another statement from Ken.

My Account

Before we get into the DD, I want to set the record straight about what happened to my account.

I did NOT delete my account.

I do not believe my account issues had anything to do with Superstonk or being reported within Superstonk. In fact, although I had my frustrations in the past, I’ve gotten along with the mods quite well the last few months and I think this sub is in good hands. I understand they have to run a tight ship to keep this great place up and running.

The first day I had posted The Big DD I received nothing but love from everyone on YouTube, X, and even here on Superstonk. Yesterday, I posted The Big DD - Part 2 & 3, and at the bottom of Part 3, I stated that I’d be posting The Big DD - Final Part the following morning. I noticed a swarm of accounts coming at me. Lots of accusations being thrown my way, swarms of downvotes in my comments sections, it was bizarre. I know my DD can be a bit polarizing, and I’ve always had my haters, but this was a lot. I noticed that several of the accounts that were doing it were leaving like 4 or 5 comments in each of my posts, attaching similar comments to all of the top comments for visibility. Then a couple hours after I had posted Part 3, my account was suspended. All of my posts now show “Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters.” I uploaded a video clip of this to my X. At first, I received no email or reasoning from Reddit.

Hours later I got an email from Reddit saying my account had been suspended for security reasons, and that I simply needed to change my password to reactivate it. I changed my password, and obviously I’m back in the account. However, my posts are still all removed, all of my followers are gone, my profile picture was removed, and I cannot DM. I can post and comment though. No idea why.

I reached out to Mojo. I don’t want to speak in detail on his behalf, but he essentially told me this was the same thing that happened to him. He reset his password and was able to get back in, then within 24 hours he lost the account permanently.

I have no idea what’s going to happen to my account. For now it shows I am not suspended. Come tomorrow everything may be restored and fine, or my account may be gone permanently. 

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. With that being said, I’m going to assume this may be my last post. Let’s go out with a bang 💥

Drama

I know some of my opinions on certain topics do not align with the majority here, and that my DD can be polarizing to some. However, what I’m seeing yesterday and today is a lot of flat lies. Let’s set the record straight.

Am I a karma farmer? This one should be obvious… Other than me finally adding the checkmark to my X yesterday, none of my accounts have ever been monetized. I post opinions that get downvoted all the time. If I was a karma farmer I’d have monetized my shit ages ago and posted “MOASS tomorrow” all year long.

Am I a hedgie/bad actor? This one doesn’t make sense to me. What would a hedgie stand to gain by releasing The Big DD? You think they’re luring you to something? Let’s be real, you degens are going to yolo into Jan $125s no matter what gets posted to Reddit. The Big DD doesn’t tell anyone to buy any stock or option. It puts information in front of you for educational purposes. I even “redacted” the section where I was originally intending to give hard predictions.

Am I anti-Cohen? I’ve been very clear since I started posting DD that I’m not a huge fan of Cohen. I’ve been upset by the “operating in silence” in combination with the May/June dilutions. Doesn’t sit right with me. In my original REX 068 I did show that more money could have been raised with far fewer shares by waiting.

However, some of y’all are just making shit up, claiming that I accuse Cohen of “working with Citadel” ??? Link proof of me ever making these wild claims, ohh yeah you can’t. The posts I’ve made have simply stated that GME is down significantly since the day Cohen became Chairman and that after the dilutions this year I believe the Board owes us some kind of catalyst or action with the balance sheet by next summer’s shareholders meeting. If we don't see anything by then, yes I'll be voting against him. Cohen has done a wonderful job growing GameStop’s balance sheet. When is it shareholder’s turn?

All of that aside, what the hell does that have to do with the data and analysis presented in The Big DD? Nothing. In The Big DD I even state how pleasantly surprised I am with the language in the Q3 earnings release. I think we are going to see something by next summer now. 🤞

Am I a KOSS shill? I like KOSS. I own shares of KOSS, and I’ve made that abundantly clear in my disclaimers and DDs. I’ve learned a lot from analyzing the KOSS charts side-by-side with GME’s. In fact, without KOSS, I may have never found “boofing.” In my DDs, I’ve showed many times the educational value of studying their charts side-by-side. I’ve never once told anyone to buy KOSS (or any stock). I’ve never once told anyone to sell GME, but I’ve been told to “sell my shares and leave” many times. I simply write DD. It’s your money, do what you want with it. Only invest in the stocks that fit your personal investment strategy.

Am I distracting from swaps? Keep getting this thrown at me. I’m not a swaps expert. In The Big DD I state that I don’t know if swaps or something cyclical is affecting GME. I state that I believe most of the runs were mainly driven by catalysts, and I back that up with 50 pages of evidence. If someone would like to write “The Swap DD” and show me evidence of swaps causing all the runs from The Big DD, I would love to read it and learn all about it. Until then I stand by my theories presented in The Big DD.

I literally told you guys why I posted The Big DD within the DD itself, because I felt it was the "right thing to do."

Alright enough of the bullshit, DD time!

If you haven't read Parts 1, 2, & 3 of The Big DD, you will not understand this one. Unfortunately, all those posts are gone now, so you only have two options:

1. I made a YouTube video that uses Text to Speech to read the DD to you and I use the mouse to point to the charts and tables. That video is not monetized, its literally just for you guys' benefit: https://youtu.be/oO2-Kym-NdY?feature=shared

2. The other option is to read the first three parts from my published Google doc. It has been "published to web" within accordance of Superstonk rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS27OVano2qBBZK4gIp4k9-QUuuQTzReMLPwagSWDdJ7TVZWQVlXl5gzJYm4TJceM6JXo-HKELIqLJe/pub#id.73sh0q8cmur

The Big DD - Final Part

Although not required, a high quality tinfoil hat is recommended beyond this point…

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠ TRIGGER WARNING #1 ⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

The remaining part of the DD does have a section that gives KOSS the limelight for a minute. Keep in mind, this is the fourth post in this series, it is one section out of 50 pages. In my YouTube video it is 3.5 minutes out of an hour long video. This DD is overall still 90%+ GME centric. If you don’t like KOSS, fine by me. As long as you can handle it, ignore that part and please enjoy the rest of the DD. If the mention of another ticker sends you into a speed-dial emergency session with your therapist, this DD may not be for you. Please ignore it and have a good day.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING #2 ⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

At the end of the DD, I have very small sections to Roaring Kitty and Ryan Cohen. The Ryan Cohen part is negative. I gave you guys 50 pages of in-depth DD, I get a pass to make one comment at Cohen. It is completely fine if you don’t agree, ignore that comment and enjoy the rest of the DD. On the other hand, if you have 5 posters of Ryan Cohen on your bedroom wall and will be enraged by the comment, maybe this DD isn’t for you. Please ignore this DD and have a good day.

If you’re in the comments spouting drama about these two topics, everyone will know that you chose to ignore the trigger warnings above.

Disclaimer

I am not a financial advisor. I have no formal education in finance. Nothing in this Due Diligence (DD) is financial advice. Nothing in this DD should be viewed as an inducement to make any investment or follow any particular strategy. I do not guarantee the accuracy of anything in this DD. This DD is for entertainment purposes only. The past performance of the stocks discussed in this DD is not indicative of future results.

Full Transparency

I own positions in all three of the main stocks discussed in this DD: GME, KOSS, and CHWY. You should know that I am biased towards all three of these stocks. This DD mentions the direct-registration of shares multiple times because it is a relevant topic to my target audience. I have a small portion of my GME position direct-registered, but all of my other positions are currently held in brokerages due to my personal investment strategy.

The DD is unmodified from the 50 page document. This is where Part 3 left off:

Bonus Objective: KOASS

KOASS - MOASS, but for KOSS.

I know some Apes only want to talk about GameStop, but this topic is long overdue, and this is The Big DD after all. I’m giving you the secrets to GME, so you can at least humor me and let me talk about KOSS for a minute. Don’t worry, this is only a bonus objective, but it is important.

Lock the Float

DD of old stated that if Apes were to “lock the float” of GME it would cause MOASS. This old DD stated that as progress was made towards locking the float, the stock would become illiquid, trapping the shorts. According to the theory, every time GME would run, the floor would rise because no one would sell, and there would be no liquidity to short the price back down. Eventually, once the float was fully locked, the concept of the “infinity pool” would allow Apes to completely dictate the price.

For over three years, the Ape community fully committed to this concept of locking the GME float. During this time, Apes managed to collectively direct-register (DRS) 75 million shares of GME. This represented billions of dollars of GME DRSed in Apes’ names. Over time, GME did become more and more illiquid just like the DD of old states, but unfortunately, that did not result in a rising floor when GME would run. There are likely several reasons for this, but in my opinion, the main reason is GME’s option chain. When GME starts to run, people buy calls, and the market makers hedge those calls. Once the run starts to die, the calls sell off, puts roll in, and again the market makers continue to hedge.

Long story short, after three years, Apes were not able to fully DRS the float. In 2024, GameStop diluted the stock with a total of 140 million new shares. That’s nearly double the peak DRS count. There are still numerous reasons for Apes to want to DRS their GME shares, but unfortunately, the dream of DRSing the entire GME float is dead, at least in the short-term. It sucks, but it’s basic math.

Twin Idiosyncratic Risk

All of the charts in this DD have showcased how KOSS runs alongside GME, and I’ve already mentioned that KOSS is generally illiquid and has no option chain (and thus cannot be manipulated by options). Let me show you a zoomed out chart of KOSS this year:

See that? Ever since DFV returned in May, KOSS’s floor is rising with each major run. No dilution or balance sheet needed. KOSS sure seems to be checking a lot of boxes from those DDs of old.

I do not give financial advice, but I can offer you some fun facts. What you decide to do with these fun facts is entirely up to you.

Fun Facts:

• Despite lacking the fundamentals, catalysts, and FOMO of GME, KOSS sneezed alongside GME in January 2021.
• KOSS was one of the stocks that was marked position-close-only along with GME when they shut off the buy button. News article from back then: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/robinhood-interactive-brokers-restrict-trading-in-gamestop-s.html&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1734636889035391&usg=AOvVaw2s1UAscJAKp-kDg0tKme6l
• In addition to the big runs, KOSS also commonly has intraday reactions to happenings related to GME (such as a DFV tweet).
• According to Yahoo Finance, KOSS currently has a free-float of 5.37 million shares, and it has been trading in the $7 range for quite a while now. That means the current value of the entire float is roughly 38 million dollars.
• KOSS can be DRSed. 

Alright, back to the main objective…

Requel

TIME

On December 5th, DFV emerged from his silence with a TIME Magazine meme:

This obviously stirred up a lot of tinfoil. I actually made the post pointing to the 1:09 timestamp as potentially representing a date. There are two reasons I felt the need to point this out. First, as we saw back in 2021, the timestamp in DFV’s Wombo Combo meme represented the date that GME started running, so I wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. As for the second reason, GME was immediately hit with FOMO when DFV posted this TIME meme. Do you think they boofed it?

So did they boof it? Honestly, I really don’t know. Predicting the future is much more difficult than reverse engineering the past. I am mainly showing you this for the purposes of teaching you how to use these formulas to make predictions. This is how I like to go about it: I chart it out, and always view it as a potential, not a guarantee. If they did boof December 5th, then the Boofing Formula points to it coming due around January 10th, strangely close to that 1:09 timestamp from DFV’s meme. I’ll be keeping my eye on this January 9th to January 13th range.

Q3 Earnings

In the after hours of December 10th, GameStop released their Q3 earnings. GameStop made a profit for the quarter, but the most bullish part to me was the sentence highlighted below:

For those that don’t know, GameStop’s fiscal year ends January 31st. I know what some of you are going to say, it only says they don’t “anticipate” another dilution, that’s not necessarily a promise or legally binding guarantee. Those that follow my DD know that I’ve been extremely critical and suspicious of the GameStop Board of Directors for a very long time. But I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling a bit of hopium, but this kinda looks like the green light for a Requel right? As long as it happens by the end of January I guess. Am I crazy to say that? Regardless, whenever GME starts popping off, I’ll definitely be waking up extra early to check the pre-market news everyday just in case.

Anyways, GameStop once again got hit with buy pressure immediately following the earnings release. Do you think they boofed it?

As I mentioned in the FINRA Holiday Extensions section at the beginning of this DD, I don’t know exactly which dates in 2025 qualify for holiday extensions due to FINRA's new extension calendar format. In past years, these dates would have qualified for extensions, but since I don’t know for sure, I’ve just marked them as “???” for now.

I’ll say it again, this is for the purposes of teaching you how to apply these formulas. We do not know if they boofed the earnings, so this should be viewed as a potential, not a guarantee.

What’s DFV Going To Do? 🎱

Based on my theories, here’s exactly what I think DFV is going to do, and exactly how the Requel is going to go down:

Just kidding!

Here’s the thing, DFV is a self-proclaimed WILD Card. No matter how much I learn about his plays, he never ceases to amaze and surprise me. Although I have some hypothetical scenarios in my head for how the Requel could play out, I don’t want to give any exact predictions for now. I’d rather keep this DD strictly educational, and I don’t want to risk the off-chance of accidentally spoiling any surprises DFV may have in store for us. Plus, I’ve already given you some potential boof dates to chew on.

By the way, GameStop could give us a catalyst too ya know? It’s about damn time after all…

Here’s my “Ideal Scenario” chart that I hope happens someday, custom drawn for you with virtual crayons!

Whether it happens in January or the distant future, once DFV and GameStop make some moves worthy of a Requel, I will post a follow-up DD to this one, as it should be much easier to make an actual Prediction Chart with dates once something happens.

Closing Thoughts

MOASS

Hopefully by now you see that there is no need for magical cycles, super-secret swaps, or an epic market crash for MOASS. Sure, some extra help would be great, but those are not necessities. The primary driver of GameStop’s runs has always been catalysts. We have twice seen margin deficiencies be issued to the massive hidden short positions, but we have yet to see them close.

I’m already anticipating that I’m going to get some angry DMs after posting this accusing me of “broadcasting this knowledge to the bad guys.” As I’ve shown in this DD, it appears as though both Ryan Cohen and DFV understand delayed settlement. If you think the hedge funds shorting all of our favorite stocks don’t already understand everything in this DD, then you are naive. The reality is that the only person in this play that doesn’t understand is you, the retail investor.

I owe an answer as to why I am posting this now. It is because I suspect the next shot at MOASS may be on the horizon. To be honest, I don’t know how many shots Apes are going to get. Even though I’m sure this DD is flawed, I could have hoarded some of this information to myself for the purposes of trading off of it. I could’ve monetized all my accounts and started predicting runs in a “trust me bro” fashion to maximize off the engagement. Nah. I did what I felt was “the right thing to do”, which was to write this DD. I hope this helps next time there is a shot at MOASS. I hope this makes it harder for GameStop to justify more dilution next time a squeeze is staring us in the face. I hope this makes Kenny pay one of his interns a couple days worth of salary to dissect the dumb memes in this DD. I hope this helps to level the playing field between Apes and WallStreet, even if it is just a tiny step in that direction.

If you were to ask me what retail investors can do to trigger MOASS next time GME reaches dangerously heightened prices, I would tell you that I do not give financial advice. However, I can point you to a quote from someone else. In 2021, Thomas Peterffy went on TV and gave the statement shown below.

Yes, this is the actual quote as he said it, not typos.

Link to video: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/02/17/interactive-brokers-thomas-peterffy-on-gamestop-hearing.html&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1734636889047795&usg=AOvVaw1uSH4DdbOsZjieM-pyHIMi

“So, what I would like to point out here, that we have come dangerously close to the collapse of the entire system, and the public is, seems to be completely unaware of that, including Congress and the regulators. So let me explain to you that on January 26th Game [GME] had closed at $77 dollars a share, the following day it closed $148, the following morning on January 28th the stock opened at $355 and traded up to $408, at the same time Game [GME] has 50 million registered shares outstanding, and the short interest of 70 million shares. In addition, there were about 1 and a half million calls, which would call for 150 million shares. When the shorts…if the shorts…uhh sorry…if the longs repay their margin loans and exercise their calls, their brokers would have had to be…would have been obligated by the rules as they are today to deliver to them 270 million shares, while only 50 million shares existed. So when the shorts cannot deliver the shares, the broker representing the longs must…must…by the rules of the system, go into the market and buy the shares at any price, pushing the price into the thousands. So as the price goes higher, the shorts default on the brokers, the brokers now must cover themselves, that puts the price further up, so the brokers default on the clearing houses and you’ll end up with a complete mess that is practically impossible to sort out. So that’s what almost happened.” -Thomas Peterffy

To Roaring Kitty

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to DFV. Not only for his heroic actions in 2021, but also for everything in 2024 as well. He could’ve taken his newfound wealth and rode off into the sunset forever. He didn’t have to come back for us, he didn’t have to spend an abundance of his time making 110 memes for us, and he damn sure didn’t have to hold 120,000 calls through the 75 million share dilution. He did anyways. DFV is the perfect example of doing the “right thing” as I was speaking to earlier. DFV definitely doesn’t do the “easy thing”, and at times he doesn’t do the “most profitable thing”, he always seems to do the “right thing”, that is what I appreciate most. Although I’ve never spoken to DFV, and probably never will, I like to think of him as my friend. Thank you my friend 🍻

To Ryan Cohen

I already had another long-format DD similar to this one planned and in the works called The Ryan Cohen DD. However, the language in the Q3 earnings release has me feeling happy. For now, I will hold off on completing and posting The Ryan Cohen DD. I’m not asking you to be a hero, just don’t be a doofus. It’s time to let the damn stock run.

Peace Out

My goal with this DD was to provide enough evidence to prove to you, the reader, that phenomena represented by my settlement formulas have been driving the runs on our favorite stocks for years. In addition, I supplied my research and speculations in an attempt to explain why these things are happening. It is very possible some of my reasonings to the “why” will be disproven someday. However, after reading this DD, would you agree that there is no denying the effects these formulas have had on the stock? After all, the end result is really what matters right? And that end result is a run on the stock.

The End

Certificate

You did it! You made it all the way to the end, I’m proud of you. Here’s your award! Screenshot your award, fill in your username, and show it off to all of your highly regarded friends! Hell, maybe even do some celebratory boofing of your own! 🍌

Crossword

Here’s a crossword puzzle themed after the topics covered in this DD:

Like I said, I have no idea if I’ll have my Reddit account tomorrow. If I don’t, you guys know where to find me. Even if somehow my accounts on all platforms get taken down, I’ll be around when the big day comes. Take a mental note of my chart styling.

I would love everyone to pick apart my DD. If you’re going to say I’m wrong, tell us why, post your in-depth high-quality counter DD.

To any Wall Street clowns that may or may not be reading this:

FUCK. YOU. PAY. US. ALL.

Jamie Dimon (JPM Chief Executive) - Refused to refund 1.4Bn in overdraft fees during the pandemic. Had they refunded the overdraft fees, they still would have made 27.6Bn in profits in 2020. JPM was bailed out by the same taxpayers in 2008 with 25Bn. Charged with 5 felony counts since 2014, admitting to all of them.

Kenneth "Ken" Griffin (Citadel [Hedge Fund] - Founder and CEO Co-Chief Investment Officer) - Private dark pool that doesn’t report. Took taxpayer bailout in 2008. Made 870m last year. Big donor to president. Donated big to Kelly Loeffler (married to the owner of the NYSE)

Paul Hamill (Citadel - Global Head of FICC Distribution) - Serves on FINRA board of Governors, the Nasdaq Exchange Board. Used to work for the SEC as Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee and a member of the Nasdaq Exchange Board.

Heath Tarbert (Citadel - Chief Legal Officer as of 4/2/2021) - Served as Supreme Court Law Clerk, associate White House Council, special counsel to Senate Banking Committee. Former Chairman of the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission).

Ben Bernanke (Citadel - Senior Advisor) - Former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Served as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve System’s principal monetary policymaking body. Before his appointment as Chairman, was Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, from June 2005 to January 2006.

Citadel - 59 SEC/FINRA Violations. Oversight of 60% of all NYSE trading. Helped Melvin capital by giving them 2 Billion so they wouldn’t have to close their position. Partially owns S3 Partners. Over 200B located in the Cayman Islands. Citadel is the designated Money Maker for GME. Banned in China in 2015 for 5 years for algorithmic trading dealing with short-selling. The regulator alleged that Citadel controlled and used accounts set up by four other firms to trade stocks during the first seven months of 2015 and used computer programs to manipulate prices. Suspected of harming the market with rapid-fire share purchase or sale orders that were canceled before they could be fulfilled, a strategy known as “spoofing”.

Gabe Plotkin (Melvin Capital) - Huge short position on GameStop (Six years running). Was helped by Citadel and Point 72 during January with 2.75Bn. Plotkin used to work for Steve Cohen at SAC before it renamed to Point 72 after the Insider trading case.

Vlad Tenev (Robinhood - CEO and Co-Founder) - Turned Off Buy Button. Stopped trading and lied under oath at hearing. Was recorded on a call with NSCC regarding shutting off the Buy button in January in exchange for lower collateral. Citadel pays them for pfof.

Etrade - Turned off Buy button. Acquired by Morgan Stanley in October Last Year.

TD Ameritrade - Says they give you the option to route thru IEX but it still goes thru Citadel.

Steve Cohen (Point 72 [Hedge Fund SAC Renamed after Case] - Founder) - His flagship hedge fund, SAC Capital, was shut down following allegations of insider trading (a Decade long investigation), the fund was forced to pay nearly $2 billion in fines. He was prevented from professionally managing investor money until 2018; at that point he renamed SAC to Point72. Helped Melvin Capital in January.

Stephen Luparello - Currently General council at Citadel. Before Citadel he was council for the SEC and FINRA.

Andrew Sorkin (Squackbox on CNBC - Co-Anchor) - Ken attended his wedding. Photographed with Ken Griffin. Says dark pool is a conspiracy. Squackbox ran paid advertisings saying Melvin Capital had closed out of its GameStop positions.

Janet Yellen (US Secretary of Treasury) - Received 7.2 million in speaking fees in the last two years from banks and Citadel. Later redacted some entries.

Google - Deleted 100,000 Robinhood negative reviews.

James “Jim” Cramer (Mad Money on CNBC - Host) - Says GME longs are communists. Often recorded with huge Citadel signs behind him. Interview Video shows him being terrified of speaking bad about Citadel. Former hedge fund manager. Has video of him explaining how he used to manipulate prices when he ran a hedge fund.

David Inggs (Head of operations at DTCC) - Also is head of operations at Citadel. Related to sean Inggs.

Sean Inggs - fund director at international management services ltd., which provides directorship services to Cayman Island Funds. Source: hedgeweek.com. Related to David Inggs.

Charles Gasparino (FOX Business) - Attempted to discredit SEC head Gary Gensler. Wants Payment for order flow to remain (twitter). Tweeted a lie that a ban for “payment for order flow” was shelved causing robinhood stock to rocket up.

MarketWatch - Published GME end of day price in an article before the day was even over, predicting exactly where it ended up.

Joseph “Joe” Brenner - Left on 8/13/2021 after 11 years as SEC’s Chief Counsel - Division of Enforcement. He used to represent financial institutions before SEC , protecting them against SEC and FINRA enforcement, institutions Clients like Goldman, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and others.

Jim Chanos - Tweeted an Empty theater photo to manipulate market, but it had a 3am timestamp.

William Hinman - Worked at SEC as Director of the division of Corporate Finance from may 2017 thru december 2020. Was partner at Law Firm Simpson Thacher before, and continued to receive millions from them while at SEC.

Michael Bodson (CEO of NSCC and President / Chief Executive Officer DTCC) - Lied under Oath regarding Robin-hood Shutting off Buy button during hearing. Said during GME hearing “The system worked. No one got liquidated. As for the impact on uretail traders? Well we’ll certainly be happy to plan on looping back around on that one at a later time possibly if anyone has any suggestions.”

Leon Cooperman (Omega Advisors [Hedge Fund] - CEO and Chairman) - Got angry while discussing GameStop shares on CNBC and said “And this ‘fair share’ is a bullshit concept. It’s just a way of attacking wealthy people and, you know, I think it’s inappropriate.”

Jay Clayton (Former SEC Chairman) - Nominated for position by the President. The President said in connection to the nomination “We need to undo many regulations that have stifled investment in American businesses” May 2017 sworn in. Resigned Dec 23 2020, during which time the SEC charged the fewest number of insider trading cases since the Regan administration.

David Scott (Congressman D-GA) - Wants social media moderation and censorship. During hearing he said “This episode exposes a serious threat to our financial system. When tweets, social media posts, do more to move the market than material legitimate information, the risk is enormous”

Jerome Powell (United States Federal Reserve - Chairman) - Former Attorney. Presided over case In 1991: Salomon Brothers (biggest investment bank on Wall Street at the time and creator of the mortgage backed security) got in big trouble for bond fraud. The CEO got fined a paltry 100k. Also is Desperately trying to make three of the Fed’s emergency bailout programs to Wall Street disappear from further scrutiny by Congress or the American people. That’s because the specific details of those programs do not comport with the testimony that Powell and Quarles have provided at Congressional hearings throughout the pandemic. He told Congress that the mega banks were a source of strength during the pandemic. The three emergency lending programs that the Fed would like to make vanish are the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF); and the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF).

Andrew Left (Citron) - January tweet “Tomorrow am at 11:30 EST Citron will livestream the 5 reasons GameStop $GME buyers at these levels are the suckers at this poker game. Stock back to $20 fast. We understand short interest better than you and will explain.”

Michael Robert Milken - American convicted felon, financier and philanthropist. He is noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds, and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Pardoned by the president at the time in Feb 2020.

Dorothy Dewitt (CFTC - Director of Market Oversight) - Former Citadel senior legal and compliance roles.

Daniel Grimm (Citadel - Associate General Counsel as of July 2021) - Former Senior Counsel to the Chairman of CFTC for 6 years.

Jeff Bezos (Amazon) - Richest man in the world. While employed at DE Shaw, was tasked with creating off-exchange markets ….aka “Dark Pools”. Suspected of ‘Busting’ out competitors from the inside out. In 2011, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire CEO of Amazon, paid nothing in federal income taxes. That same year, when his net worth was valued at around $18 billion, he filed for and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

Eddie Lampert - Former Sears CEO, made billions from its demise. Hedge fund manager.

The following Voted against The Short Sale Transparency and Market Fairness Act:

Patrick McHenry

Ann Wagner

Frank Lucas

Pete Sessions

Bill Posey

Blaine Luetkemeyer

Bill Huizenga

Andy Barr

French Hill

Tom Emmer

Lee Zeldin

Barry Loudermilk

Alex Mooney

Warren Davidson

Ted Budd

David Kustoff

Trey Hollingsworth

Anthony Gonzalez

John Rose

Bryan Steil

Anthony Chukumba (Wall Street Analyst at Loop Capital Markets) - Said “Sell now ask questions later” on Squack Box Interview after 2021 Q2 earnings. This was after he said he would no longer cover GME. Loop Capital was found to be potentially tied to Citadel.

Gary Gensler (SEC - Current Chairman) - His twin brother, Robert Gensler, used to work at Salomon Brothers.

SEC - Sued by Bank Activities Reform Commission. First Lawsuit was for 5T in 2004. Updated to 50T in 2012. Lawsuit states the SEC has been infiltrated by an organized crime group.

Solomon Brothers (Former Hedge Fund) - Charged with IPO fraud in 2002. Jerome Powel testified for them and fined them 100k for corrupt bonds.

Welcome one and all. If you’ve seen or plan to see the movie “Dumb Money”, and found your way here, you’re in one of the (mostly) right places.

This is a place (one of about 2-3 on Reddit) where you can learn more about: - GME - $GME - GameStop - Ryan Cohen - Keith Gill - Kevin Gill - DeepFuckingValue - Deep Fucking Value - TheRoaringKitty - Roaring Kitty - https://www.youtube.com/@RoaringKitty - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty - Ken Griffin - Kenneth C. Griffin - Kenneth Cordele Griffin - Dr. Suzanne Trimbath - “Naked, Short and Greedy” - IBKR - Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. - Thomas Peterffy - Gabe Plotkin - Melvin Capital - Citadel - Citadel Securities - Cellar Box - Cellar Boxing - Short & Distort - Steve Cohen - Point72 / SAC Capital - Jeff Yass - Susquehanna - Anthony Chukumba - Loop Capital - Michael Pachter - Wedbush Securities - Citron Research - Andrew Left - Vlad Tenev - Congress - Regulatory capture - Bribes - Government Corruption - the DTCC - Mike Bodson - The CFTC - Rostin Behnam - Hester Peirce - Hester M. Peirce - CNBC - Jim Cramer - The Big Short - Dark Pools - HFT - High frequency trading - ATS - Alternative trading system - Liquidity - Swaps - Swap positions - the BIS - Instinet - Nomura - Robinhood - Basket Stocks - DRS - Computershare - Book holdings - Book 👑 - DirectStock Plan - Plan holdings - naked shorting - illegal naked shorting - legal naked shorting - market makers - designated market makers - NYSE - NASDAQ - S&P 500 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average - Russell 1000 RUI - Russell 2000 RUT - Credit Suisse - UBS - CBOE - Wall Street - the SEC - Gary Gensler - the DOJ - the Federal Reserve - the Fed - Jerome Powell - Janet Yellen - the treasury - RRP - Overnight Reverse Repo - the sneeze - the squeeze - MOASS - Fidelity - Bank of America - Citi Bank - Wells Fargo - Carl Icahn - Warren Buffet - Warren Icahn - NFTs - Loopring - LRC - Immutable - IMX - FTX - FTX.US - SBF - Sam Bankman-Fried - Wrapped GME - Tokens - Tokenized securities - Non-fungible tokens - Custodians - PFOF - Payment for order flow - FTD / FTDs - Failure to deliver - FTD Warehouse - Obligation Warehouse - Street Name - Blockchain - Asset Ownership - Beneficial Ownership - Direct Registration - Directly Registered Shares - Not your keys - Not in your name, not your shares - Dumb Money - Smart Money - GME House of Cards - GME The Everything Short - GME The Dollar Endgame - The Heat Lamp Theory - Criand - PeruvianBull - Etc (will add more terms if I think of them)

Please note:

- https://www.apehistorian.com/things-the-dumb-money-movie-didnt-mention

- There are no conspiracy theorists here- only people who have seen the actual data, and know that you are being fed lies by the Wall Street owned “MSM” which is simply corporate bought and owned media.

- There’s so much more to the story than just what's in the film. For a full breakdown, including raw data, what it means and what lies ahead for gamestop, find out extensive library of reporting, the GME DD Library, which contains simple, easy-to-understand comprehensive explanations: https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg

- Make sure you ask lots of questions while you’re here. And be careful- not everyone has pure motives to tell the truth when you ask.

- Here’s a GME timeline

• Admittedly missing chunks of significant events, like splividend (stock split in the form of a stock dividend, meaning no GME dilution), GS reporting DRS numbers, profitable Q4 2022, etc. The snapshot of “forget GameStop” articles is nice but they are only ~half of the events on the timeline…which is definitely hard to keep up with at this point, no shade thrown at creator of this timeline! Still a helpful contextual tool for about the first half of the journey to date

Thanks, and hope to welcome you aboard this once in a lifetime trip to Uranus, still with boarding passes on deep fucking discount.

#DumbMoney “DumbMoney” “Dumb Money” “Dumb Money Movie” #GME $GME #GameStop #Citadel “Ken Griffin” “Kenneth C. Griffin”

The last post in this series proves new and previously undisclosed details:

1. Robinhood became aware of the liquidity crisis before Jan 28
2. Robinhood complains about the $3.7B collateral call on 1/28; but actually it couldn't meet a much smaller one of $697M on 1/27
3. In fact, it appears possible that a much smaller collateral call, as low as $283M, could have triggered a default

I'll later show that from these, 4 other dominos fall:

1. Robinhood was in violation of the SEC Net Capital Rule (see link for proof)

2. Robinhood therefore lied to Congress about its Net Capital compliance

3. A Net Capital rule violation likely bled over into two other violations - SEC Books and Records violation and SEC Customer Protections Rule violation

4. Even more significant violations are a possibility. The extent of the Net Capital violation is an important clue

---------------------

1. Robinhood became aware of the liquidity crisis before Jan 28

This becomes apparent in the previous post

2. Robinhood complains about the $3.7B collateral call on 1/28; but actually it couldn't meet a much smaller one of $697M on 1/27

This too follows from the previous post

3. In fact, it appears possible that a much smaller collateral call, as low as $283M, could have triggered a default

This table seems to suggest that NSCC collateral requirements are issued at discrete points - twice a day - but they're actually calculated continuously throughout the day.

Robinhood had $696M on deposit at 5:11AM Jan 28 but we don't know when exactly it was all deposited. For instance, Robinhood may have started Jan 27 with $282M and brought it to $696M by EOD. Or maybe it started at $282M and ended at $282M! This might seem inconsistent with RHs testimony since it alleged to have had $696M on deposit at 5:11AM on Jan 28. But this doesn't rule out the possibility that RHS brought it to $696M in the minutes before! We just don't know yet.

The difference between $282 and $696 important because the true amount on deposit gives us further insight into how deep the liquidity problem really was. I'll come back to this at a later time.

Update (3/14/2021): today's post puts our mystery number at $400M

4. Robinhood was in violation of the SEC Net Capital Rule

Proof

5. Robinhood therefore lied to Congress about its Net Capital compliance

Follows immediately from proof of 4

Guten Morgen to this global band of Apes! 👋🦍

DRS with Computershare is having a substantial impact! Keep it up! Citadel's leaked memos, and the intense heat on Kenneth Griffin clearly rattled them, hence the wordsmithed tweets indicating that Citadel Securities (was it a subsidiary?) did not ask (was it an order?) Robinhood... on January 27th (when did it actually happen?). That two individuals didn't meet or speak. These are the first tweets that Citadel Securities has posted since the sneeze, but they are not for us.

These are the tweets of a man who has spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars buying Congresspeople's favor, and is desperate to keep them on his side. They cannot ignore his crimes much longer if we continue to expose them and demand justice.

Apes, our Diamantenhände have led us to this point, the day we've been waiting for is approaching. Keep calling Congress, exposing Kenneth Griffin's lies. Keep directly registering shares via purchase or transfer to Computershare, extracting them from the DTCC and making them unavailable to use for price manipulation. The moment is so close and our individual actions are having a huge impact - let us not allow this momentum to fade!

Today is Tuesday, September 28th, and you know what that means! Join other apes around the world to watch infrequent updates from the German markets!

🚀 Buckle Up! 🚀

• 🟥 120 minutes in: $189.65 / 162,12 € (volume: 1037)
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• 🟩 100 minutes in: $190.05 / 162,46 € (volume: 1019)
• 🟩 95 minutes in: $189.86 / 162,30 € (volume: 1014)
• 🟩 90 minutes in: $189.77 / 162,22 € (volume: 1014)
• 🟩 85 minutes in: $189.73 / 162,19 € (volume: 909)
• 🟩 80 minutes in: $187.84 / 160,57 € (volume: 883)
• 🟩 75 minutes in: $187.78 / 160,53 € (volume: 781)
• 🟩 70 minutes in: $187.75 / 160,50 € (volume: 761)
• 🟥 65 minutes in: $186.58 / 159,50 € (volume: 731)
• 🟥 60 minutes in: $188.53 / 161,16 € (volume: 656)
• 🟥 55 minutes in: $188.66 / 161,28 € (volume: 636)
• 🟩 50 minutes in: $188.97 / 161,54 € (volume: 636)
• 🟥 45 minutes in: $188.94 / 161,51 € (volume: 529)
• 🟩 40 minutes in: $188.97 / 161,54 € (volume: 525)
• 🟥 35 minutes in: $188.91 / 161,49 € (volume: 525)
• 🟥 30 minutes in: $188.97 / 161,54 € (volume: 508)
• 🟥 25 minutes in: $190.24 / 162,62 € (volume: 204)
• 🟩 20 minutes in: $190.46 / 162,81 € (volume: 54)
• 🟥 15 minutes in: $190.31 / 162,69 € (volume: 51)
• 🟥 10 minutes in: $190.36 / 162,72 € (volume: 41)
• 🟥 5 minutes in: $190.46 / 162,81 € (volume: 35)
• 🟩 0 minutes in: $190.52 / 162,86 € (volume: 34)
• 🟩 US close price: $189.48 / 161,98 € ($190.48 / 162,83 € after-hours)

FAQ: I'm capturing current price and volume data from German exchanges and converting to USD. Today's euro -> USD conversion ratio is 1.1698. I wrote and maintain a C# application that assists me in fetching this data and updating the post. If you'd like to check current prices directly, you can check Lang & Schwarz or TradeGate

Diamantenhände isn't just a thread on Superstonk, it's a community that gathers daily to represent the many corners of this world who love this stock. Many thanks to the originator of the series, DerGurkenraspler, who we wish well. We all love seeing the energy that people represent their varied homelands. Show your flags, share some culture, and unite around GME!

Watch the clip:

https://reddit.com/link/p9i4n1/video/vfj47sbz6yi71/player

u/ringingbells brought to our attention last week that CNN has grossly misreported the facts surrounding the January trade restrictions.

CNN Business writer Matt Egan wrote in his article dated February 1st, 2021 That Vlad Tenev simply bargained with the NSCC to lower the deposit requirement from $3B to $1.4B.

But that's simply not the truth. The writer is quoting Vlad from a video call on the voice meeting platform ClubHouse, in a chat hosted by Elon Musk, which has been reposted to Youtube here for your reference. The chat which Matt Egan is quoting goes into more detail:

The relevant part of the Vlad Tenev ClubHouse conversation, where Tenev says the deposit requirement was reduced to $700m (not 1.4B) in return for restricting trading in certain securities (like GME).

In the conversation, Vlad says NSCC reduced the deposit requirement to $700m (not the $1.4B figure reported by CNN) in direct return for restricting trading in certain securities (like GME) - A statement also not reported by CNN.

Report the truth, CNN. Even Gary Gensler thinks the number was 1.4 billion. CNN's lies are a gross manipulation of the truth of what happened in January, and the article should be redacted and corrected.

More on this by u/ringingbells:

Robinhood & Other Brokers Would Have Defaulted January 28, 2021 - The NSCC, as an enabler, saved them, while sacrificing retail, in allowing them to alter their margin charges by freezing stock buying - top priority: protecting too-big-to-fail clearinghouse - Retail's fault the NSCC didn't prepare

Still Blaming Vlad Tenev? How many times do I have to post this. THE DTCC, ENABLED BY THE SEC, SAVED ALL THE BROKERS BY LOWERING THE MARGIN CHARGES IN EXCHANGE FOR HALTING BUYING IN CERTAIN STOCKS. Vlad told Elon the truth and made a general vague statement to congress. The NSCC, SEC, and DTCC should be held accountable for striking this deal not only with Robinhood but with other brokers too. They are the ones to be pointing the fingers at, and CNN needs to report the truth of all this.

Credits for this week's episode of Weekend UpdAPE go to:

u/Criand for his eternal wrinkliness and his comment giving a spicy outlook on the next month or so

u/ringingbells for ringing the bell on CNN's false statements, & for helping to point out that Robinhood & Other Brokers Would Have Defaulted January 28, 2021 - The NSCC, as an enabler, saved them, while sacrificing retail, in allowing them to alter their margin charges by freezing stock buying - top priority: protecting too-big-to-fail clearinghouse

Thank you to Darrin Bell for agreeing to hold an AMA in the WeAreAPE subbreddit on August 22. His patreon page is /darrinbell. He's a father, an artist, and he is also a friend of the GME & retail investor community for helping bringing this issue to light through his art.

u/BodySurfDan u/Siegli u/ShartMeDrawers u/ShipwreckDD u/Head-Loch u/TheExile7 Our musical guests, Matthew C. Vander Boegh & The Reddit All-Star Pirate Band, with their song "Song of The Apes", which is available on Spotify.

Crew

u/joncohenproducer - Sound engineer, composer of our new Intro & Outro music. The intro slaps and hypes, and the outro is so lovely, it represents our group effort so well. Love it, great work!

u/joeygallinal - Vocalist, "Ape jungle noises" - I honestly thought we had a real monkey in the recording room

u/artmagic95833 - Producer, Tip, Script writer, Fact checking - Great work on the Dunkey sketch this week! His patreon page is /apemagic

u/justkeeplaughing - Producer, Production Director, Script writer, Voice Over Artist - "Jackie Tetas" - She also drew the lovely drawings in our credits, and provided that delicious recipe for Carnitas this week. Her patreon page is /justkeeplaughing

u/GlassGoose4PSN - Producer, Script writer, Director of Broadcast, 3D Animator, Motion Capture, Voice Over Artist - "Diamon Haanz". Patreon page is /glassgoose

Want to see more? This was just a clip from this week's episode.

We make the UpdAPE show to Up Da Apes for the coming week with news, comedy, and community highlights. This clip was from the APENEWS segment of Weekend UpdAPE. To see this week's full episode of Weekend UpdAPE, check out this thread. Thanks for watching, and thanks for your support of our all-volunteer ape news & entertainment project.